


Outrages Upon Personal Dignity

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bathing/Washing, Captive Thrawn, Desperation, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hair Washing, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Interrogation, It's my timeline I can do what I want, Kallus defects before Atollon, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Panic Attacks, Past Rape/Non-con, Prisoner of War, Rape Aftermath, Sensory Overload, Thrawn is captured before Atollon, Torture, Trauma, Whump, bed wetting, fear wetting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: According to Imperial Military Code, no prisoner of war should be subjected to "outrages upon personal dignity" — acts which humiliate, degrade, or otherwise violate the dignity of the prisoner.The Rebellion has no military code.
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Kanan Jarrus/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 45
Kudos: 80
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

The Rebels stripped him of his uniform and re-dressed him while he was unconscious; by the time the effect of the stun faded, his hands and feet were both in binders, and his uniform had been swapped out for nondescript grey trousers and an undershirt. He blinked, his vision blurry, and realized he was lying on a thin mattress, not on the floor. Vaguely, he remembered the pirates who'd captured him; even more vaguely, he remembered that he should have been in pain right now, perhaps even agony, but his body was almost numb instead.

The lights in his cell were on. He craned his neck, rolling his shoulders and twisting at the waist to see the rest of the room, and as he did so a sense of discomfort became more apparent — the cell was empty, and his bladder was not just full but heavy, throbbing with the urgent need to empty it.

How long had he been out? He felt like he’d been asleep for seven days; he felt like he could sleep for seven more. His brain was nothing but fog; his limbs were heavy and almost insensate, refusing to obey his commands. 

He parted his lips, tried to work some moisture into his mouth and croaked, “Hello?”

The word came out muffled against the thin pillow beneath his head. There was no response; maybe they hadn’t heard him, but Thrawn found it more likely they were choosing not to respond. He shifted, rubbing his wrists against the binder cuffs as much as he could in an attempt to get a feel for them, but even thinking about picking the lock exhausted him. He couldn’t get past the first step in his mind; his brain clicked uselessly, repeating the same vague concepts over and over again, the words shifting together until they were absolutely meaningless.

They’d drugged him, he realized. They’d mixed some sort of sedative with the stun effects; never a good idea. And not something he could muscle through, either. He felt a painful twinge of pressure in his lower abdomen and groaned, turning his head against the pillow to stifle the sound — but when he tried to tense his thighs, he found his muscles unresponsive, too heavy to move.

“Hello?” he tried again, his voice even more raw than before.

Nobody answered. Thrawn turned his head again, squinting at the pane of one-sided transparisteel opposite his bunk. He couldn’t see through to the other side, but if there were people standing there watching him, he’d be able to see their heat signatures — and there was no sign of anyone on the other side. He was alone. 

Maybe it was nighttime, wherever he was. Or maybe they’d decided he wouldn’t wake up for another few hours yet. Any other time, Thrawn thought, he would use that to his advantage, but now, his head was throbbing and he could barely move, and it was all he could do to keep his eyelids from drooping shut. 

Curled on his side — and needing the refresher badly — he fell back asleep, his ankles cuffed together and his hands bound behind his back.

* * *

Ezra glanced at the video feed, desperately wishing he could find out what he’d done to piss Hera off so badly that he got stuck watching Grand Admiral Thrawn sleep. He’d gotten a brief moment of excitement hours earlier, when Thrawn stirred and raised his head, but the sedatives were still in his system, and he’d fallen asleep again almost immediately afterward.

He hadn’t moved since.

Ezra rested his chin on both hands, eyes hooded, watching the seconds tick by. His attention was starting to drift again when something — maybe the Force, maybe just instinct — compelled him to look up again. 

Thrawn was lying on his side with his hips twisted at an angle that could only be comfortable to someone heavily sedated, giving Ezra a clear view of the plain grey trousers they’d placed Thrawn in after searching him. 

There was a slight tent in those trousers, like Thrawn was half-hard. Ezra stared for a moment, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, and then stifled a snort in his hands. He reached for his comm and flipped it on.

“Hey, Sabine,” he said. “Get down to the surveillance room, I got something to show you.”

He waited, all sense of boredom gone, and watched the screen. Five minutes passed with no change before Sabine barreled into the room.

“What’s the—” she started, coming up behind Ezra and peering over his shoulder. Her eyes widened, lips curling into a disbelieving smile. “Oh, my God,” she said. She sank into the seat next to him and wheeled herself closer, scoffing as she got closer to the screen. “That’s hilarious,” she said. 

Ezra didn’t reply, but he took a screenshot to show that he agreed. 

“Might be good blackmail, too,” Sabine said. Then, rocking her head from side to side, “Or, well, at least it’ll be fun to shove in his face during interrogation, just to see how he reacts.”

“Oh, for sure,” said Ezra. “You wanna bet he has a wet dream?”

Sabine scoffed, sitting back a little and turning her face — a put-on that was belied by the faint flush on her cheeks. “Yeah, right,” she said. “What is he, like, fifty? Fifty-year-old men don’t have wet dreams, dude.”

“Five credits?” Ezra asked, putting his hands palm-to-palm in a pleading gesture. “I’ll take the losing side and bet he cums.”

He waited for a stinging remark in reply, but Sabine said nothing. She was still staring at the video feed; her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips parted slightly. Slowly, Ezra turned to see what she was staring at.

There was a small wet spot on the front of Thrawn’s trousers.

“Oh, kriff, I _missed_ it?” Ezra said.

“He’s not—” Sabine said.

The wet spot grew. Sabine closed her mouth, shaking her head rather than finish her sentence. Her cheeks were burning.

“Oh, shit,” Ezra breathed, leaning forward. He studied the screen, watched the dark patch between Thrawn’s legs grow until it spread to the thin mattress beneath him. “Is he _pissing_?”

Hastily, he took another screenshot.

“He _has_ been asleep for nearly two days now,” Sabine said, sounding almost embarrassed. On screen, Thrawn’s chest moved up and down in a deep, even breathing pattern; his face and body were utterly relaxed, looking almost blissful as he wet the bed. Ezra watched as a puddle of urine formed beneath the sleeping prisoner’s hips, the wet patch spreading down from Thrawn’s crotch to both his legs, and up to his stomach as well. 

As they watched, the stream of urine grew so strong that it fountained through Thrawn’s trousers; the puddle reached the edge of the mattress, seeping into the sheets as it did, and spattered against the floor. It was more than Ezra had ever seen somebody piss all at once, but like Sabine said earlier, Thrawn had been effectively holding it for almost forty-eight hours now. The stream stayed steady for two full minutes, spreading until the entire mattress was wet and urine was pattering on the floor. 

The pissing slowed down gradually; still sleeping, Thrawn sucked in a deeper breath than usual and let it out in a sigh as the stream dried up entirely. He lay limp and relaxed in his own urine, entirely unconscious of the fact that his clothes were soaked through and he’d voided his bladder while he slept — and on camera, and in a Rebel cell, too. Ezra glanced over at Sabine and found her eyes were as wide as his were.

“Oh, I can’t _wait_ till he wakes up,” Ezra said. 

* * *

Thrawn’s dreams, vaguely pleasant as they were, were interrupted by the low murmur of voices in his cell. He came awake slowly, losing the sense of relief from his dreams but too comfortable to really fight for consciousness; he was cognizant of a weight in his limbs that he didn’t want to try to combat, and although he didn’t have any blankets, the bed was unbearably soft and warm and—

“—wet,” said one of the voices.

Thrawn forced his eyes open at once, recognizing the feeling beneath him immediately. The entire mattress was wet — and his clothes were soaked, clinging to his skin. He tried to feel between his legs, forgetting that his hands were cuffed, and almost swore with frustration when the binders held his wrists firmly together.

“Oh, I think he’s awake,” someone said. Thrawn squeezed his eyes shut, recognizing the voice but unable to place it. He felt a hand on his shoulder, broad and callused and warm. “Hey,” the voice said again.

Kanan Jarrus. He recognized it now. Groggily, Thrawn opened his eyes again and stared up at the vague shape above him. The warmth in the bed was rapidly cooling, there was a sharp scent of ammonia in the air, and the pressure in his bladder was urgent but far less so than before, leaving him with no doubt that he’d lost control of himself while he slept. He heard a terrible, strangled sound escape his throat, something between a groan and a whimper as he realized he’d wet the bed.

“Hey,” said Kanan again, his voice gentler than Thrawn expected. “You okay?”

Thrawn closed his eyes, not answering. He could feel heat gathering in his cheeks. He almost flinched when the hand moved off his shoulder and rested on his forehead instead.

“Yeah, he’s awake,” Kanan said. “I can handle it, Hera.”

Thrawn listened as a door somewhere in the cell opened and closed.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” Kanan said.


	2. Chapter 2

When he first heard that Grand Admiral Thrawn had been captured, Kanan hadn’t dared to believe it was true — especially since the courtesy message was sent by pirates and came with a hefty price tag attached. The pirates had produced images upon request — not videos, which just fueled Kanan’s suspicions — but eventually they’d also agreed to use timestamps, and in the end, Hera had made the executive decision to send the pirates the funds.

The images the pirates had sent over were heavily sanitized, but there had been hints even then of what had been done. Anyone looking at the holos could tell right away that Thrawn was unconscious, but upon studying the images further, Kanan had noticed rust-red stains on Thrawn’s uniform collar and hints of discoloration across his temples and cheekbones that might have been bruises. There was dried blood crusted on the corner of his mouth, on his nostrils, on his ear — yet it was clear his face had been cleaned, at least as much as the pirates cared to clean him, so Kanan could only imagine how much worse it had been beforehand. 

The full-body shots sent by the pirates had shown an Imperial uniform done up not-quite-right, with the fasteners left open — probably, Kanan thought, because you could only reach the fasteners properly if you were wearing the uniform yourself, and Thrawn hadn't been in a position to do it. This meant the pirates had undressed Thrawn at some point, possibly only re-dressing him for the photos. The laces of his boots were still tucked in Imperial-style, and Kanan guessed the pirates wouldn’t have bothered with that — so they hadn’t _fully_ undressed him, he realized with a sense of dread. They’d left his boots on. Perhaps that meant they’d only taken off his tunic, but Kanan suspected it really meant they’d only bothered to pull his trousers down as far as they felt necessary. 

What good reason was there to undress an unconscious prisoner? To bathe him, perhaps, but you didn't leave the boots on somebody you wanted to bathe. 

Hera paid the pirates their ransom fee, and the two of them set out together to collect Thrawn — with the entirety of Ghost Crew waiting in the wings. The exchange went over without a hitch, and while Hera drove, Kanan and Ghost Crew were left alone with the unconscious Grand Admiral, who was strapped to a medical-grade hover gurney they’d had to pay a little extra to keep.

Kanan studied Thrawn’s face, his heart sinking. The injuries looked ten times worse in real life. Thrawn's lip was healing from a nasty split, and there were small red patches of broken skin on his cheekbones, where someone had struck him over and over again. The others gathered around Thrawn briefly, studying him with interest that dulled at once when they’d finished cataloguing his injuries. Their noses wrinkled; they walked away. 

Eventually, Kanan was the only one still standing by the hover gurney. The scent of blood and burnt flesh and stale cum hung over Thrawn, leaving him with no doubt of what the pirates had done to him. Guilt and horror roiled within him, making his stomach itch. He needed to do something, anything, to help, to show at least that Ghost Crew wasn't like the pirates who'd held him before. He sighed through his nose, cognizant of everyone watching him, and loosened the straps around Thrawn’s chest.

Gently, he pulled back the sealing strip of Thrawn’s tunic and opened it just enough to see the bare chest underneath. There were patches of blistered skin running from Thrawn’s left shoulder down to his abdomen — blaster wounds, left behind by too many stun shots in too short a time. More serious burns dotted his hips and ribs, each one forming a near-perfect circle, like someone had pressed a still-hot blaster barrel against his skin right after shooting him. 

Kanan stared at them for a moment, his mouth a grim line. Nobody should have to endure that many stun shots; the risk was so well-known that the pirates must have done it maliciously, knowing full well the damage they could cause. He sealed Thrawn’s tunic back up as thoroughly as he could, without fixing the fasteners, and then felt his forehead.

Warm — maybe a little too warm, but it was tough to tell with alien species, especially when Kanan had no frame of reference. He reached out to the living Force, trying to get a sense of Thrawn’s health — any possible infections or fractured bones — but all he got was a faint sense of discomfort and unease. 

“Ought to drug him,” said Kallus from the other side of the ship. Kanan’s head shot up.

“What?”

Kallus gave a casual shrug. The others were staring at him, but with curiosity, not with the reflexive horror and outrage mingled together on Kanan’s face.

“I said we ought to drug him,” Kallus repeated. “Sedate him before he has the chance to recover. I’ve worked with Thrawn before, remember — he could mop the floor with just about anyone, if given the chance.”

“Not those pirates, apparently,” Ezra said with a quiet snort. Kanan shot him a sharp look, then turned his gaze back on Kallus.

“You can’t sedate someone who’s been stunned,” he said. 

“Sure you can.” Kallus placed one hand on his chest, where his rank plaque would have been if he were in uniform. “ISB, remember?” He met Kanan’s eyes, studying his face, and then added carefully, “I’ve had plenty of practice. And even if something went wrong, we have stims on hand. It’s nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“No,” said Kanan, his voice firm. He saw Sabine and Zeb share a doubtful look, as if they privately agreed with Kallus, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

They wouldn’t sedate a prisoner without his permission, he told himself.

* * *

They unloaded Thrawn in his holding cell, which was currently set up as a makeshift medcenter — and a woefully undersupplied one, Kanan had to admit. He hesitated once he was inside, looking between Zeb and Kallus — whose faces were hard — and then at Ezra, who looked like he knew exactly what Kanan was going to ask and would rather be anywhere else in the world.

With a sigh, Kanan turned to Hera instead.

“Help me out with him?” he requested.

She was already stepping forward before he finished the question. “Ezra, see if you can’t find some clothes in his size,” she said. “Sabine, Kallus, Zeb, go find any extra bacta you can get your hands on.”

They scattered at once, leaving Kanan and Hera alone with the prisoner. Thrawn’s eyelids fluttered occasionally but didn’t open, and his breathing remained deep and even. Hera joined Kanan, stepping up to the other side of the gurney and looking down into Thrawn’s sleeping face. Her expression was grim.

“They raped him,” she said.

Kanan could think of nothing to say; he gave her a brief nod, feeling sick. After a long moment, he found his voice and said, “We’ll cut ties with them. There’s no reason to work with—”

“We need them,” Hera said sharply, shaking her head. “Right now they’re the only allies we have who can get us through the Rimma Trade Route. We don’t have a choice.”

His mouth tightened, but he didn’t argue. There were rapists in every organization, he told himself — in the Empire and in the Rebel cells, and in all their allies and enemies. They couldn’t afford to pick and choose their allies based on the actions of a few individuals.

Telling himself that left a sour taste in his mouth, but he could do nothing about it now.

Hera unholstered her blaster, setting it to stun and training it at Thrawn’s chest. She nodded at Kanan, giving him the go-ahead to continue, and he set about undoing the straps keeping Thrawn to the gurney. He stayed connected to the Force as he worked, watching for any flicker in Thrawn’s consciousness.

Gently, Kanan undid Thrawn’s tunic; he had to manipulate Thrawn’s arms out of the sleeves, mindful of swelling and bruising around the shoulders that might have been indicative of a serious wound. Thrawn’s face didn’t so much as twitch as Kanan worked, leaving the tunic pinned beneath Thrawn’s back.

He was well-made for an Imperial, Kanan thought. Even unconscious and incapable of flexing, Thrawn’s abs were clearly defined, his long, lithe figure lending itself well to the cut of an Imperial uniform. Kanan had seen plenty of high-ranking officers in his day and knew that most of them went to seed long before they achieved their rank; in this way, as in so many others, Thrawn was apparently an exception.

He glanced at Hera, who met his eyes steadily, without ever moving her blaster away from his chest. Kanan cleared his throat, gesturing down at Thrawn.

“I’m, ah, going to remove his pants now,” he said.

Hera quirked an eyebrow. “You want me to look away?” she asked wryly.

“No,” said Kanan, suppressing a grimace. “Just wanted to give you fair warning.”

She scoffed, turning her eyes back to Thrawn’s face. “I think I can handle it.”

Still, Kanan hesitated a moment, and he couldn’t pretend it was for Hera’s benefit. He told himself there was nothing wrong with undressing an unconscious man — especially an injured man, and especially a prisoner. But it still didn’t feel right. He reached for Thrawn’s waistband, finding the hidden clasp that kept his trousers closed.

He couldn’t help but notice that Thrawn’s standard-issue belt was gone. Discarded somewhere, he supposed, for ease of access. He undid the clasp and pulled the sealing strip down, exposing a pair of tight-fitting black briefs. The outline of Thrawn’s cock was clear, and Kanan couldn’t help but glance at it, his mouth dry.

Then his eyes trailed up, taking in the dried stains on Thrawn’s underwear — and on the bare skin just above his waistband — and on the inside of his white trousers. Red spots of blood were interspersed with the white-ish crust of uncleaned human come, some of it adhering to Thrawn’s clothes, most of it spattered over his thighs.

Kanan examined this all and then huffed out a sigh, his chest aching with some mixture of sympathy and guilt. He tugged Thrawn’s trousers down past his hips and then shifted down the gurney, pulling on the cuffs of the trousers to get them off Thrawn’s legs. Hera’s arm twitched, and at first Kanan thought she might be tempted to help, but when he looked up, he saw that her eyes were still trained on Thrawn’s face, and her jaw was tight.

He pulled Thrawn’s trousers off all the way and started to fold them automatically, straightening up at the same time to see what Hera was looking at. Thrawn’s head had lolled to the side, and his eyes were hooded but open, staring vaguely in Kanan’s direction.

“Is he awake?” Hera asked. From her side of the gurney, Kanan realized, she couldn’t see Thrawn’s face.

“Sort of,” he said. He tossed the trousers to the floor, approaching Thrawn slowly. “He was stunned too many times,” Kanan said, indicating the blistered skin on Thrawn’s chest but studying Thrawn’s face. “I don’t think he’s properly awake yet.”

Thrawn’s eyes, however, were definitely tracking Kanan as he came closer. He blinked slowly — so slowly that Kanan thought he might be drifting off — and then his lips parted and he said, “‘M awake,” in a voice so alien and an accent so thick that Kanan could barely understand him.

“Not very wise to tell us that,” Hera noted, favoring Thrawn with a dry, strained smile. Kanan couldn’t bring himself to fake the same amusement. Too much exposure to stun bolts could scramble a guy’s brains about as badly as a severe concussion, and the look on Thrawn’s face was of sleep-blurred confusion. His eyes were dazed, but his body was relaxed, as if he didn’t realize where he was or the severity of his situation.

“What’s your name?” Kanan asked, just checking.

Thrawn’s eyes slid closed. Kanan watched him, willing to wait him out in case this was a feint, but then Thrawn’s arm slipped off the gurney, jarring his shoulder, and Thrawn’s entire body tensed as if electrified. He bared his teeth, eyes squinching shut; across the gurney, Hera’s hand tightened on the blaster, but she didn’t shoot. Kanan gave it a moment, watching Thrawn to be sure the pain was real, and then stepped forward and lifted Thrawn’s injured arm back onto the gurney, bending it at the elbow so that Thrawn’s hand rested on his own stomach. 

“Name?” Kanan asked, checking the swollen joint of Thrawn’s shoulder. This earned him another quick grimace, fainter than the last one.

“Kivu…” Thrawn started, then opened his eyes, blinking furiously in confusion. “Mitth.”

When Kanan only watched him, waiting for the right answer, Thrawn closed his eyes again, this time in apparent concentration.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” he said finally, pronouncing each syllable with care. He muttered something afterward that Kanan couldn’t make out, something exasperated and pained.

“Thrawn for short?” said Hera, raising an eyebrow at Kanan. 

“Apparently,” Kanan said. He ran his thumb over the knot on Thrawn’s shoulder, feeling out the dislocation there. But this time, other than a brief fluttering of the eyelashes, there was no sign of pain from Thrawn. “We’re going to get you cleaned up and changed now,” Kanan told him, making sure his voice was loud and clear enough to break through the fog in Thrawn’s mind.

There was no response. Gently, Kanan pushed Thrawn’s eyelid open, taking stock of the glazed, pupil-less eyes.

“Unconscious again?” Hera asked.

Kanan nodded. He closed Thrawn’s eyes and stepped back, walking over to the bare-bones shower area in the middle of the room. There was a dip in the tiled floor here, with a drain at the center of it, and a single shower head hanging down from the ceiling. Kanan went to the faucet built into the wall and turned it; he was still adjusting the temperature when Ezra came in, carrying a bundle of clothes and towels.

His eyes flickered toward Thrawn’s nearly nude figure and he suppressed a grimace.

“Mission accomplished,” Ezra said, holding up the folded pile of clothes. The distaste in his voice was clear. “You’re not giving him a _shower_ , are you?”

“He’s dirty,” said Hera simply. “Those pirates had him for a week.”

Ezra set the clothes down at the foot of the gurney, wrinkling his nose, and Kanan floated one of the towels his way through the Force. He wet it through beneath the shower spray and headed back to the gurney, where Ezra was lingering, the disgust on his face replaced with a tight, unreadable expression as he took in the stains on Thrawn’s thighs and hips. 

“You don’t have to stay,” said Kanan. What he really meant was: _You need to go._ Ezra nodded, eyes fixed on Thrawn, and left.

Only when he was gone did Kanan get to work. Hera kept her blaster trained on Thrawn, watching him as his face twitched in his sleep; he seemed always just a second away from waking. Kanan started with Thrawn’s face, pressing the wet towel against his forehead and cheeks to wipe away the grit that had settled there over the past week — dirt from the floor of the pirates’ ship, salt from dried sweat and what Kanan suspected were tear tracks. 

When he was done, he held the corner of the towel to the cut at the corner of Thrawn’s lips, letting the warmth and wetness of the cloth soften the dried blood there until he could wipe it away without causing Thrawn pain. He did the same thing on Thrawn’s nose and ears, taking his time with each area and pausing every time he saw Thrawn’s eyes flicker beneath his lids.

“He won’t stay asleep much longer,” Hera warned him, her voice practically toneless.

“I know,” said Kanan. He cleaned Thrawn’s neck and shoulders a little more roughly, taking care only with the obviously injured spots. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of Thrawn’s underwear and pulled it down as clinically as he could, cleaning him thoroughly but without lingering. There was a thatch of neatly-trimmed pubic hair, silkier and straighter than any human’s, and Kanan had just swept the towel over that area when Thrawn lifted his head groggily and flinched.

Pretending not to notice — a task helped along by the fact that Thrawn wasn’t speaking and didn’t seem to comprehend what was going on — Kanan continued, bending one of Thrawn’s legs at the knees to make sure he eradicated every trace of torture the pirates had left behind. 

“Kanan,” said Hera, a note of warning in her voice.

He glanced at Thrawn, saw him staring blearily at Kanan. There was a harsh line between Thrawn’s eyebrows.

“Go to sleep,” Kanan told him, figuring it was worth a shot. He waited a beat, and when Thrawn didn’t respond, he straightened out Thrawn’s leg for him and lifted the other one, pressing the towel against the underside of Thrawn’s thigh and rubbing the dried blood and cum there away. He kept the far end of the towel draped over Thrawn’s lap as he worked, offering him as much privacy as he could. 

“Kanan,” said Hera again.

Thrawn’s muscles tensed at the same time — just his abs, as he tried and failed to sit up. Kanan took a step closer to him and placed one hand flat on Thrawn’s stomach, gently holding him down while he finished the job.

“It’s fine,” he said to Hera. “He’s still—”

He felt cold skin brush against his knuckles and looked over. Thrawn’s head was lolling back against the gurney again, his eyes closed, but he’d moved his hand to cover Kanan’s. Kanan’s first thought wasn’t that Thrawn was trying to fight him off; it was that Thrawn, like any half-conscious patient, was trying to figure out what was happening to him, using his hands when his eyes failed him. Kanan had been stunned before; he knew how long it took for the blurriness of one’s vision to fade afterward. He thought nothing of the touch.

Kallus, though, apparently did. He burst through the door before Kanan could fully process what was going on, and the sound of the hatch hissing open caused Thrawn to stir again, lifting his head in a vain attempt to see who had entered the room. 

“Step back,” Kallus barked, his face hard. Kanan did so by reflex, only understanding a moment later what Kallus had entered the room to do.

The syringe came down on Thrawn’s uninjured arm.

* * *

“He’s former ISB,” Hera said wearily, rubbing her eyes. She sat across from Kanan, both of them hunched over from exhaustion that was more mental than physical. “He knows what he’s doing,” Hera continued. “More than we do, anyway. If anyone should be running this interrogation…”

Kanan couldn’t find it in himself to respond. He tried to massage the crick out of his neck and heaved a sigh. “How long has it been?” he asked.

Hera checked her chrono with a grimace. “Forty-one hours since we collected him now,” she said.

“And he hasn’t woken up yet,” Kanan said. They caught each other’s eyes, both uneasy.

“I haven’t checked lately,” Hera said. “Ezra has the watch.”

There was a beat of silence. Kanan rested his chin on his hands, saying nothing, and Hera seemed to think back over her words for a moment before taking out her comlink.

“Status,” she said into it.

The pause was brief, but just long enough to make both of them sit up straight, eyebrows furrowed.

“Uh, yeah,” said Ezra, his tone strange. Kanan couldn’t tell if it was concerned or amused. “Uh…”

“Is he conscious?” Hera asked, voice clipped.

“Uhh, no,” said Ezra. 

Through the static, Kanan could hear Sabine whispering in the background, her voice indistinct. He stood, with Hera following his lead a moment later; both of reached the door before Ezra finally spat it out:

“He, uh…he wet the bed.”

Hera froze. Kanan, with his hand on the door release, glanced back at her, a sense of guilt and chagrin settling over him. He saw some of the same emotions on Hera’s face as the door hissed open.

“We’ll be right there,” she said to Ezra.

They hurried back to the observation room in silence and found Ezra and Sabine there, both of them sitting with their arms crossed and their backs turned to the video screen — but both of them sneaking occasional glances. Kanan murmured a greeting to them, not really hearing his own words, and leaned close to the display. One glance was all he needed to confirm Ezra’s report.

“Stay here,” he said to the kids. Hera was already heading to the cell door; by the time he joined her, she’d just finished scanning her code cylinder. They walked in quietly, the lights in Thrawn’s cell brighter than they were anywhere else on base, the smell of urine assaulting their nostrils. Hera hesitated halfway across the room, clearly reluctant to approach the bed, where Thrawn was curled on his side.

“I should go find him a change of clothes,” she said. “We can’t leave him all wet.”

Kanan gave her a brief, appreciative nod, glad to hear the same weary sympathy in her voice that he was currently feeling. He approached the bed, studying Thrawn’s relaxed face and stepping around the puddle of urine on the floor near the edge of his bunk. He sighed, not so much out of exasperation as out of regret; it seemed almost ridiculous to view any Imperial in a sympathetic light, but it was difficult not to when somebody entered your care unconscious and injured. And the poor man’s basic needs hadn’t been tended to in the slightest — and that was Kanan’s fault, something of which he was keenly aware.

Thrawn’s pants and shirt were soaked through, his hips twisted to the side to accommodate his bound hands and feet with a minimum of discomfort. As Kanan watched, Thrawn’s chest heaved in a deep sigh, disrupting his breathing pattern. A moment later, his head shifted to the side and a line appeared between his eyebrows.

“Oh,” said Kanan, just as Thrawn’s eyes cracked open. “I think he’s awake.”

Behind him, Hera crossed her arms and said nothing, projecting her discomfort across the room. Thrawn stirred a little, but not much, evidently still suffering from the effect of the sedative. Kanan reached forward instinctively, resting his hand on Thrawn’s shoulder. 

“Hey,” he said, trying to get Thrawn’s attention. He watched Thrawn blink, his eyes soft from sleep. It took him a long moment to shift his gaze toward Kanan, and when he did, he didn’t seem to realize who was standing above him. He squinted against the light and then, apparently exhausted from lifting his head the small amount he had, he went limp again, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in his pillow.

A quiet sound, something like a whimper, escaped Thrawn’s throat and stabbed straight into Kanan’s heart. He saw lines of tension around Thrawn’s eyes.

“Hey,” he said gently, moving his palm to Thrawn’s forehead instead. “You okay?”

Thrawn’s eyes were closed beneath his hand; Kanan could feel his eyelashes fluttering against his skin. He watched the lines of tension turn into embarrassment, felt the heat radiating from Thrawn’s face as he struggled toward consciousness and realized where he was and what he’d done. Thrawn’s arms twitched, his wrists straining against the binders; his thighs pressed tightly against each other.

“Yeah,” said Kanan, trying to repress another surge of guilt, “he’s awake. I can handle it, Hera.”

She nodded, taking a step back at once. Kanan didn’t glance back. He waited for her to leave the room, keeping his hand on Thrawn’s forehead the whole time. He hoped it comforted Thrawn a little, or at least didn’t cause him any further distress, but he really couldn’t tell. When he heard the door close behind Hera, he let out a deep breath and moved his hand a little, brushing Thrawn’s hair back from his eyes.

“Come on,” he said, bending over to help Thrawn sit up. He put his hand flat on the piss-soaked fabric of Thrawn’s shirt, lifting him off the bed with a little help from the Force, since Thrawn didn’t seem capable of sitting up on his own. He blinked rapidly as he sat up, unable to get his balance with his hands and feet bound.

This, Kanan thought, was probably going to be the most awkward bath of his life.

For both of them.


	3. Chapter 3

He settled Thrawn down on the tile floor, realizing only after it was too late that he should have started the shower and warmed the tiles first. But Thrawn, to his credit, didn’t complain. He curled up where Kanan had placed him, directly beneath the shower head, and leaned forward until his forehead rested against his knees. Kanan knelt down beside him, placing one hand flat against Thrawn’s back, more to soothe him than to support his weight.

“I’m gonna go turn the shower on,” he told Thrawn without moving away. “And then I’m going to use a vibroblade to cut away your clothes. I’m not going to take your binders off. You understand?”

Thrawn didn’t respond. After a moment, Kanan stood and crossed to the wall where the faucet was installed, leaving Thrawn behind. He ran back over his words in his head, trying to figure out if they’d been too brusque — or worse, too gentle — but he couldn’t assess them neutrally, not without help. 

He turned the faucet hard to the right, wincing when he heard the shower head sputter to life behind him. The water came out cold first, but Thrawn didn’t flinch beneath the spray; he stayed still even as Kanan returned to his side, rubbing his hands briskly up and down Thrawn’s back and arms to keep him warm until the water temperature changed.

It took less than a minute for the water to warm up; it took five minutes for Thrawn’s skin to follow. Once he was radiating heat from more than just his face, Kanan pulled away a little and removed the vibroblade from his belt.

“Shirt first,” he told Thrawn, keeping his voice level. He didn’t want to show more consideration to the prisoner than was warranted, but he didn’t want to touch him without warning, either. And it seemed to him that Thrawn might appreciate a little kindness right now, even if he didn’t show it; if Kanan were in his position, he’d certainly feel the same. 

He plucked the wet material away from Thrawn’s back, holding the collar as far from Thrawn’s throat as he could get it. Careful not to graze Thrawn’s skin, Kanan applied the tip of the vibroblade to the fabric and watched the fibers part from each other as if by magic, singed but not burning. He slid the blade all the way down to the small of Thrawn’s back and then made his way back up to split the sleeves, a far more delicate procedure. The shirt fell away into pieces in Kanan’s hands, and he tossed each scrap of fabric away from the shower drain.

He hadn’t seen Thrawn’s back when they collected him from the pirates, but he’d gotten a brief look while dressing him, so the scars and more recent wounds there didn’t come as a surprise. Kanan eyed them, noting the thin cuts up and down Thrawn’s back, each one scarcely larger than a monofilament line. He touched Thrawn’s back gently, keeping his fingers off the wounds and rubbing at his unbroken skin.

“We’ll get some bacta on these before we dress you,” Kanan told him, a lump of guilt in his throat.

There was a soft huffing sound from Thrawn, muffled against his knees. A sardonic laugh, Kanan thought. His fingers flexed on Thrawn’s back — he considered apologizing, explaining that the pirates’ actions weren’t condoned, that it wouldn’t happen again — and then dismissed the urge. He flicked the vibroblade back on with a sigh and felt Thrawn’s muscles tense subtly beneath his hand as the hum of the blade filled the room.

“You’re alright,” Kanan told him, keeping his hand flat on Thrawn’s back. Water from the shower head trickled down the back of Thrawn’s neck, unheeded by either of them. The scent of urine had been almost completely washed away now.

“I’m gonna cut off your pants now,” Kanan told him, circling his thumb over Thrawn’s shoulder blade. “I’m gonna start at your hip and go down to your ankle. Okay?”

He touched Thrawn’s left hip and waited for a response, but Thrawn only turned his head to face the other way, robbing Kanan of the chance to read his expression. Kanan took it as a sign of consent, or the closest thing to consent that Thrawn could give. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of Thrawn’s sleep pants and cut through the cord that kept them tied.

Carefully, slowly, Kanan dragged the blade down the seam of Thrawn’s trousers, pinching the material to keep it taut as he worked. He paused at the knee and wrapped his fingers around Thrawn’s calf, slowly and gently straightening his legs. Thrawn stiffened a moment, tried to sit up straight while keeping his face turned away. But with the sedative still in his system, he couldn’t seem to manage. Kanan leaned forward, wrapping one arm around Thrawn and pulling him close so he wouldn’t fall. 

With Thrawn’s back against his chest — and water from the shower quickly soaking through his clothes — Kanan finished his work and started again on Thrawn’s right leg, this time starting from the top of Thrawn’s thigh. When the trousers were done, Kanan hooked a hand under Thrawn’s bare thighs and helped him pull his knees up to his chest again, simultaneously guiding Thrawn forward until he could stay balanced on his own.

“Okay,” Kanan said the word coming out as a breathless sigh. He stood, keeping one hand on Thrawn’s back for support. “I’ll be right back to you. I’m just stepping away to get some soap and a wash cloth. Are you going to be alright?”

With effort, Thrawn turned his head to stare at Kanan. His eyes were hooded, with deep shadows beneath them. His face was unreadable. Kanan stared at him, for a moment certain that Thrawn’s sedative was wearing off a little — a combination of time and the shock of a cold shower. But Thrawn said nothing.

“Alright then,” said Kanan with a nod. He left the cell quickly, rooting around through the supplies he’d placed in the observation room. Sabine and Ezra, he noted with relief, had kept the camera on in case something happened but left the room.

He found what he needed — and grabbed some medical supplies as well to save an extra trip — and headed back to the cell in less than a minute. Thrawn was in the same position Kanan had left him in, but a subtle line of tension went through his shoulders as the hatch opened and Kanan stepped inside.

Kanan watched him closely as he approached. There was something about Thrawn’s posture that sent off alarm bells in his head, but he couldn’t figure it out. It was like Thrawn was trying to make himself small, even invisible. When Kanan knelt beside him again, he saw the tension in Thrawn’s thighs and frowned.

“You still alright?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. He didn’t get one. Kanan studied Thrawn a moment longer, confirming to himself that the tension he saw was most likely from pain, not from an imminent attack. He uncapped the bottle of soap and squirted a generous helping into his palms.

“Hair first,” he said matter-of-factly, “since we didn’t get it before.”

He combed the soap through Thrawn’s wet hair, making sure to get as much of it against Thrawn’s scalp as he could. He worked it up to a froth, running the blunt edges of his fingernails from the short hairs at the back of Thrawn’s neck to the skin behind his ears and back up to his scalp again, feeling around for any knots or wounds he might have missed the day before.

The tension in Thrawn’s body ebbed away beneath Kanan’s touch and then returned again, coming and going in waves. His eyes slid closed and didn’t open again, but sometimes — like when Kanan scratched lightly at the back of his neck — he seemed almost relaxed, and other times, like when Kanan used his thumb to rub away the dried blood behind Thrawn’s ear, lines of discomfort returned to his face.

It had to be confusing, Kanan thought with a spike of sympathy, to be treated so harshly by the pirates and then to be treated with kindness here, among their allies. He couldn’t lie to Thrawn and pretend that the kindness would last, either, so he forced himself to say nothing. 

He ran his hands through Thrawn’s hair one last time and then grasped his shoulders, gently guiding him backward until his head was directly beneath the shower spray. He moved one hand to Thrawn’s forehead, using his palm to keep the soapy water from running into Thrawn’s eyes, and Thrawn’s chest hitched at the change in position. His thighs tensed again — from surprise, Kanan thought, or maybe from the mental discomfort of leaning against Kanan’s chest for support — and then he saw Thrawn’s abs tensing too, as much as he could with the sedative in his system.

And then, as Kanan rinsed the soap from his hair, Thrawn’s jaw tightened and he went unnaturally still. A moment later, Kanan heard something he couldn’t quite place at first — like the trickle of water from the shower head had suddenly gained an echo. He glanced down, looking between Thrawn’s legs for the first time since they’d started, and saw a steady stream of urine hissing against the tile floor. 

Thrawn’s cock was flaccid, the tip of it only a few centimeters from the tiles, urine spraying from him with an intensity that suggested he’d been holding it since Kanan woke him. He paused, keeping one hand over Thrawn’s eyes but moving the other one down to his ribs, where Kanan rubbed soothing circles over his skin as Thrawn let go. He didn’t say anything, trying to pretend he didn’t notice, but he saw Thrawn’s lips twist and heard his breath stutter and knew that he hadn’t quite been successful.

“It’s okay,” Kanan told him, his voice sounding awkward even to his own ears. He watched the stream of urine weaken momentarily as Thrawn’s breath hitched and, without thinking about it, Kanan used the hand he’d placed on Thrawn’s ribs to pull him closer. “You’re alright,” he said softly. “Just let it out. You’re not hurting anyone, you’re not gonna get in any trouble. You’re right next to the drain.”

Thrawn hissed at that, his body trembling as he leaned against Kanan for support. The stream strengthened again even as Thrawn strained against the sedative, evidently trying to hold it; urine ran steadily down the length of his bare legs, mixing seamlessly with the shower water except for the heat of it, then pooled around his bound feet for a moment before the spray from overhead drummed it down the drain. 

He whimpered once as his bladder drained, a sound of discomfort from deep in the back of his throat, but his abdomen tensed against his will and pushed more urine out in a hot gush. Kanan kept rubbing circles on Thrawn’s ribs, whispering empty platitudes to him — and hoping desperately, with every fiber of his being, that Thrawn wouldn’t remember any of this humiliation when the effects of his sedative wore off. 

He waited, holding Thrawn until the stream dried up in a series of short trickles and spurts. Thrawn shivered against him as the last bit of urine drained from his bladder, his eyes still covered even though the soap had long since been rinsed from his hair. Kanan felt moisture against the palm of his hand — sparks of heat from the corners of Thrawn’s eyes — and watched Thrawn grit his teeth.

“You’re okay,” Kanan murmured, finally moving his hand away to grab the soap again. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Thrawn leaned forward as soon as Kanan released him, burying his face in his knees again. If he was crying, he was doing it so quietly that Kanan couldn’t tell.

He ran the wash cloth over Thrawn’s back and shoulders gently, resuming the bath as if nothing had happened. He did a brief pass over the areas where he knew the puddle of piss hadn’t reached when Thrawn wet the bed. He took more time the closer he got to Thrawn’s cock, applying extra soap and fiddling with the shower head to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Thrawn stayed pliant but not exactly cooperative the entire time — he neither fought Kanan nor truly helped him, only occasionally responding when Kanan moved his legs or urged Thrawn to turn his shoulders or hips.

He’d just finished with Thrawn’s feet when the hatch hissed open again and Hera stepped inside, carrying Thrawn’s fresh clothes. She paused a moment, her eyes flickering critically over Thrawn’s body, and then she nodded at Kanan and stepped closer. 

“It’s just Hera,” Kanan said for Thrawn’s benefit — though he wasn’t sure whether this information would comfort Thrawn at all. There was no response; Thrawn hadn’t even glanced up when Hera came in. She stepped around them, touching Kanan’s shoulder briefly as she passed.

“I’m just about finished up here,” Kanan told her, running the wash cloth once more over the sole of Thrawn’s foot. Hera deposited the clothes on the floor, far away from both Thrawn’s bed and the shower drain. “You going to help me get him dressed?” Kanan asked, watching her approach the bed.

“I’m gonna clean up first,” Hera told him. She ran a palm over the damp spot on Thrawn’s mattress and then sighed, sliding it off the bed frame and holding it gingerly out in front of her. Kanan watched her leave with it and wrung out the wash cloth before tossing it away. It joined Thrawn’s soiled, cut-up clothes with a wet splash.

“Let’s get you dried off,” Kanan said to Thrawn. He put his hands under Thrawn’s arms, lifting him slightly and dragging him out from under the shower head.

Thrawn put up no resistance. He stayed still when Kanan left him, hurrying to the wall to shut the water off. He returned to Thrawn’s side an instant later, bringing a towel with him. He ran the towel through Thrawn’s hair first, gently patting and rubbing at his head until most of the water had transferred from his hair to the fluffy fabric of the towel. Hera re-entered the room with a fresh mattress and an armful of cleaning supplies, not even glancing at Kanan as she walked past.

She cleaned the bed and the floor silently while Kanan, across the room, wiped the remaining droplets of water from Thrawn’s back. He ran the towel over Thrawn’s arms, all the way up to the cuffs around his wrists, and then worked on his abdomen and legs. Thrawn parted his legs slightly — as much as he could with his ankles bound together — to let Kanan dry his thighs.

Kanan wasn’t sure whether to take that as a sign of trust or an indicator that Thrawn’s week with the pirates had broken him more than Kanan knew.

He draped the towel over Thrawn’s lap when he finished, resting one hand on his uninjured shoulder as he turned to watch Hera. She’d sprayed disinfectant over the floor where cold urine had been puddled a few minutes ago. As Kanan watched, she wiped it up and turned to meet his eyes.

“Ready?” she asked.

Kanan nodded. Squeezing Thrawn’s shoulder, he said, “We’re going to get you dressed now.”

He didn’t expect an answer, but to his surprise, Thrawn lifted his head, turning his eyes in the general direction of Kanan’s face but not quite meeting his gaze.

“How?” Thrawn asked, his voice hoarse and his accent still thick. Kanan hid his surprise as much as he could. 

“I’m going to take off your binders,” he said levelly. “And Hera is going to cover me in case you try something.”

Thrawn lowered his head again with a soft snort. He shrugged slightly, maybe trying to dislodge Kanan’s hand from his shoulder. He didn’t speak again.

After a long moment, Kanan turned to Hera and nodded. She unholstered her blaster while Kanan worked on Thrawn’s cuffs, undoing those on his feet first and then moving to his hands. Thrawn didn’t move, holding still as Kanan rubbed circulation back into his wrists and ankles.

“I’m gonna stand you up now,” Kanan said after a minute had gone by. He guided Thrawn to his feet, keeping his touch light and using the Force to assist. The towel slid off Thrawn’s lap, but neither of them made any attempt to catch it. 

Thrawn swayed on his feet, neither leaning against Kanan nor covering himself. He hissed as Kanan manipulated his arms, moving them forward until they were crossed over Thrawn’s chest for the first time in days. Then, after giving him a moment to adjust, Kanan guided Thrawn’s arms down again and hoped his circulatory system would take care of the rest. 

He applied bacta to the wounds on Thrawn’s back and chest first, keeping his touch brief and clinical and using the Force to keep Thrawn upright. When he was done, he grabbed the soft pair of trousers Hera had brought him, bunching up the legs and kneeling before Thrawn.

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he ordered.

After a long moment, Thrawn complied, his touch tentative and light. Kanan held the trousers for him, using one hand to guide Thrawn’s feet through each hole. He felt Thrawn struggling for balance and used the Force to aid him, adjusting slightly until Thrawn had both feet back on solid ground. Kanan stood slowly, pulling the trousers up to Thrawn’s hips. When he straightened his back, he and Thrawn were face-to-face, with Thrawn’s hooded eyes fixed on Kanan.

“You can let go of my shoulders now,” said Kanan gently.

Thrawn hesitated, but after a moment his hands slid down Kanan’s arms. He stopped at the elbow, his fingers twisted loosely in the material over Kanan’s forearms, and he didn’t press Thrawn to let go. He unfolded the long-sleeved shirt Hera had brought him and bunched it up again until he had a straight line from the hem to the collar.

“Bow your head,” Kanan said.

Thrawn tipped his chin down, hair falling into his eyes, and Kanan slipped the shirt over his head. He got one hand under Thrawn’s elbow, lifting his arm and guiding it through the sleeve.

“You shouldn’t stand so close to him,” Hera muttered, but from the tone of her voice, Kanan knew it was an empty warning. She didn’t see Thrawn as a threat right now anymore than he did.

He pulled the hem of Thrawn’s shirt down to cover his abs, then straightened out his sleeves and the waistband of his trousers. Thrawn returned his hands to Kanan’s forearms, clutching to him gently. When Thrawn glanced up, he was surprised that Thrawn met his eyes.

“Do you need the toilet?” Kanan asked him.

Thrawn’s eyebrows raised slightly. He hesitated and shook his head.

“Then it’s time to put the binders back on,” Kanan told him. Thrawn didn’t move, and eventually Kanan twisted his arms out of the other man’s grasp, bringing his hands up to circle Thrawn’s wrists. He held both Thrawn’s hands together — in front of him this time, not behind — and snapped the cuffs back into place.

When he was done, he pushed Thrawn back toward the bed, mildly surprised by the small, graceful steps Thrawn took without even glancing over his shoulder, and the almost elegant way he folded himself onto the bed. The sedative had to be wearing off. 

“Lay back,” Kanan told him, and Thrawn complied, lying flat on his back with his legs bent over the side of the mattress. Quickly, Kanan knelt down and bound Thrawn’s ankles. He’d barely moved away when Thrawn bent his knees, slowly pulling his legs up onto the bed.

As if he didn’t notice Kanan and Hera watching him — or simply didn’t care — Thrawn curled his arms to his chest and rolled on his side, facing the wall. His eyes were closed, his face pale and drained. Kanan glanced at Hera just in time to see her holster her blaster; she met his eyes with a shrug.

It would be hell to interrogate him after this, Kanan thought. In fact, it would be almost impossible. For him, at least. Hera clapped his shoulder on her way out of the cell and after a moment — not sure if Thrawn was sleeping or feigning it — Kanan followed her.

Maybe she was right, he thought. Maybe they should leave the questioning to Kallus after all.


	4. Chapter 4

When he came up behind Kallus the next day, he caught a clear glimpse of the other man’s datapad. Images of Thrawn — screenshots from the video feed inside Thrawn’s cell — scrolled by in front of Kallus’s eyes. Thrawn standing nude beneath the shower head, every inch of his body on full display; Thrawn lying in bed asleep, in his own waste; a close-up of the open wounds on Thrawn’s chest and back, before Kanan got the chance to treat them. 

Kallus banished the images as soon as he realized Kanan was behind him, but he glanced up and met Kanan’s gaze without shame, even smiling a little.

“I’ve heard our little prisoner is awake,” he said lightly.

Kanan couldn’t help but frown. He crossed his arms over his chest, his mind still on the screenshots. “Probably,” he said. “I haven’t checked, but the sedative was wearing off last night when I left.”

“Fed him yet?” asked Kallus. 

“No.” Kanan averted his eyes as Kallus turned to face him fully. “Hera told me you wanted first crack at him.”

Despite his best efforts, the disapproval in his voice was clear. Kallus studied him for a moment. When he spoke, his tone was grave.

“Hunger may weaken him,” he said. “It’s not likely, but it’s worth a shot. We can’t forget who he is, Kanan.”

Kanan winced at that, looking away. He gave Kallus a quiet nod. 

“Do what you have to,” he said.

* * *

He stopped by Thrawn’s cell shortly after breakfast, peering through the two-way mirror in the observation room. Zeb was standing guard, with his feet up on the table and a beat-up old datapad in his hands.

“Hasn’t woken up yet,” he told Kanan.

Kanan frowned. Through the mirror, he could see Thrawn curled on his side, still facing the wall in the same position Hera and Kanan had left him in hours before. He felt a horrible suspicion unfurl in his gut, and was immensely relieved a moment later when he saw the slight expansion of Thrawn’s abdomen as he breathed.

“Has he woken up at _all_?” he asked Zeb, his voice sharp. 

“Wouldn’t know, mate,” said Zeb, not even glancing up from his datapad. “I’m just here to stop him from escaping.”

With an irritated sigh, Kanan hit the hatch release on the cell door. Thrawn didn’t stir as he walked in; hyper-aware that he might be stumbling right into a trap, Kanan slowed and reached out to the Force, trying to get a feel for Thrawn’s consciousness. The signals he got were almost unreadable; Thrawn’s mind was too foreign for Kanan to make any sense of. It was nothing like other aliens Kanan had come across — Twi’leks like Hera and Lasats like Zeb were as easy to read as humans.

He approached Thrawn’s bunk with a frown, making sure the man’s hands and feet were still securely bound before he touched his shoulder. Thrawn’s skin was cold to the touch, sending a thrill of alarm through Kanan — but he could see Thrawn’s chest expanding as he breathed. Leaning closer, he saw Thrawn’s closed eyes and parted lips, and the still-drained expression of dead-to-the-world exhaustion on his face.

“Thrawn,” said Kanan loudly, shaking him by the shoulder. “Wake—”

Thrawn half-turned, looking at Kanan with heavy-lidded eyes. He said nothing.

“—oh,” said Kanan. “You’re awake.”

Thrawn just blinked, then curled back up on his side, eyes sliding closed again.

“No, stay awake,” Kanan urged him, slapping Thrawn’s shoulder gently. Thrawn huffed quietly and opened his eyes a little, staring blankly at the wall. He bent his elbows, bringing his cuffed hands up so he could rub the sleep off of his face.

It wasn’t right, Kanan thought with a frown. Thrawn should’ve been awake and aware without assistance long before now; in fact, he probably should have stayed awake after his bath last night, but instead he’d fallen back asleep frighteningly fast and even now seemed groggy and only half-conscious. Slowly, Kanan eased Thrawn onto his back, and could tell from the easy way Thrawn complied that the sedative had indeed worn off.

But then why was he still so tired?

Thrawn lay on his back, returning Kanan’s gaze with a sort of weary unself-consciousness. He straightened his legs out slowly, kept his arms curled to his chest. There was no expression on his face.

“What do you remember?” Kanan asked him.

Thrawn studied him for a moment. When he opened his mouth to answer, Kanan could hear the dry click of his tongue against his teeth and realized nobody had given Thrawn water since they’d accepted him from the pirates. He fought the urge to go fetch a glass for him right away.

“I remember being bathed,” Thrawn said, his hooded eyes fixed on Kanan, his voice toneless. “By you.”

“Anything before that?” Kanan asked.

Thrawn considered it, his face impossible to read. “The pirates,” he said. He offered no further clarification.

“And do you remember why you were being bathed?” Kanan asked, almost afraid to ask. A small, almost imperceptible line appeared between Thrawn’s eyebrows.

“The pirates,” he said again. 

Ah. So he thought Kanan had noticed the dried blood and semen on his trousers and cleaned him up. Well, Kanan wasn’t about to correct him — that was probably humiliating enough, without adding the truth to the mix. He nodded absently, thinking over his options.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Kanan Jarrus,” said Thrawn easily. He raised his cuffed hands and, with lazy grace, pointed toward the two-way mirror. “Garazeb Orrelios and an unknown human. Possibly Sabine Wren. Small in stature.”

Kanan whipped his head around to stare at the mirror. The glass was still opaque; nobody was visible. Eyebrows furrowed, he looked back down at Thrawn, whose eyes had drifted closed again.

Was he Force-sensitive? Or was there some other explanation? When Kanan reached out to the Force, he could sense Sabine lurking on the other side of the mirror, just as Thrawn had said. He looked down, saw the even rise and fall of Thrawn’s chest, and snapped his fingers in front of his face. 

Slowly, Thrawn opened his eyes and focused on Kanan again.

“You need to wake up,” Kanan said. Thrawn stared up at him expressionlessly. 

“Then wake me up,” he said with disinterest. “I’m sure Agent Kallus is looking forward to that task.”

Kanan stared down at him for a moment, grappling between frustration and concern. He ran over the possible causes of Thrawn’s fatigue in his head.

Well, he hadn’t had any water in two days. So it stood to reason that…

“When was the last time you ate?” Kanan asked him.

Thrawn gave a soft snort. “It is perhaps unwise to feed a prisoner,” he told Kanan. “For all you know, hunger may weaken me. Make me more compliant.”

A chill went through Kanan as he remembered Kallus saying almost the exact same thing. He glanced at the mirror and then took a gamble — and a deep breath — as he sat on the edge of Thrawn’s bed. Thrawn stilled at once, his eyes flying open in surprise, but he didn’t move away. 

“When was the last time you ate?” Kanan asked again.

Thrawn eyed him for a long time. He didn’t speak until Kanan prodded him in the ribs.

“Why do you wish to know?” asked Thrawn, exhaustion making his tone unreadable and his voice faint.

“So I can feed you,” Kanan snapped. 

“Will you let me keep it down?” Thrawn asked, voice flat.

“We need you alive,” Kanan said, affecting strained patience to hide the flash of concern he truly felt. “So yes, I’ll let you keep it down.”

He tried not to think of the implications of that statement, and he fought to keep his face in neutral, too. After a long moment, Thrawn turned his eyes away from Kanan. He mouthed words that Kanan almost missed:

_Don’t get attached._

A feeling like ice washed over Kanan. The microphone system in the cell was so well-hidden that it wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but Thrawn had somehow known about it nonetheless. Perhaps he’d just guessed — that was more likely than assuming he’d somehow spotted the wires in the walls — but more disconcertingly, he’d read Kanan with ease, and had even seen fit to warn him. Or advise him, or whatever it was.

Kanan took a deep breath, struggling to find his resolve again. As if he sensed this, Thrawn turned to face him.

“How long have I been unconscious?” he asked.

Kanan hesitated, but took the change of subject in stride. “Two days, apart from your bath,” he said. 

He watched something indecipherable flicker across Thrawn’s face — perhaps concern or confusion over the amount of time.

“Then I haven’t eaten in six days,” Thrawn said eventually. “But I’ve had water more recently.”

Six days. Kanan sat back, releasing a long, slow breath. Well, that explained the fatigue — and it explained why Thrawn had reacted so severely to the sedative, which reassured him a little. At least it meant Kallus hadn’t messed up the dosage. He nodded to Thrawn.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Thrawn said nothing. He didn’t change position as Kanan left the room. Outside, Kanan muttered a greeting to Sabine and Zeb and then breezed past them, heading without pause to the small cantina across the courtyard. Kallus was no longer sitting there, he noted; in fact, Kallus was nowhere to be seen.

He collected a tray full of bland foods, all of them easy to digest, and then headed back to the cell, stopping only once to fill his canteen with water. He walked as quickly as he could manage back to the observation room, careful not to spill the tray.

And then he stepped inside and there was Kallus, blocking Kanan’s path.

“I thought we weren’t feeding the prisoner,” said Kallus evenly.

Kanan paused, taking a step back so the tray wouldn’t collide with Kallus’s chest. He shot a quick glance at Zeb and Sabine, trying to figure out which of them had ratted on him, and saw immediately that it was Zeb — and that he wasn’t sorry for it in the slightest. Looking back at Kallus, Kanan strove to keep his face and voice cold.

“He hasn’t eaten in six days,” he said. “And he hasn’t had water for at least two. If you want him to die as soon as you start the interrogation…”

Kallus’s eyebrow twitched. He looked down at the tray full of food in Kanan’s hands, doing silent calculations. Then, turning back toward the two-way mirror, Kallus studied Thrawn’s form.

“He’s lying to you,” he told Kanan decisively. “He hasn’t eaten for four days at the most. And how often do you plan to feed him?”

Now it was Kanan whose eyebrow twitched. “Three times a day,” he said, his tone dark. “Same as everyone else in the galaxy.”

“Then this,” said Kallus, turning back to the tray, “is too much food. If we’re feeding him at all, it’s going to be on a starvation diet. You can’t be feeding him six hundred calories at every meal.”

Kanan felt something inside him snap at that. He brushed past Kallus without another word, hitting the hatch release as he stepped through so that the door would shut in Kallus’s face. Thrawn glanced his way as he came in and then, much to Kanan’s surprise, sat up gracefully, but with some effort, using only his abs. He settled with his legs pulled up and his back against the wall as Kanan approached him.

Kanan hesitated a moment, wondering if he dared to free Thrawn’s hands. In the end, he decided against it and settled down on the mattress next to Thrawn instead, resting the tray in his own lap. 

“We’ll have to be quick about it,” he said gruffly, hyper-aware of the three pairs of eyes watching him from behind the two-way glass. 

“Agent Kallus disapproves, does he?” said Thrawn, sounding wearily amused. Kanan frowned at him and opted not to answer.

“Do you want the water first?” he asked.

Thrawn stared at him a moment longer, reading Kanan’s face. Whatever he saw there evidently sobered him a little. He nodded and sat back, anchoring himself against the wall while Kanan unscrewed his canteen.

“Tiny sips,” he told Thrawn. “I’ll count to three so you know when to stop, that way nothing spills.”

Thrawn’s eyes darted to him, bright and unreadable. Slowly, Kanan held the canteen to Thrawn’s lips and tipped it forward.

“One … two … three,” he counted, and pulled the canteen back. Thrawn stopped drinking at once, even pulling back a little before Kanan had the chance to move the canteen away. He lifted his cuffed hands, putting them between himself and the canteen almost defensively, and clutched his throat. Alarmed, Kanan tried to move Thrawn’s hands away to see, but Thrawn mutely shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” Kanan demanded.

“Nothing,” Thrawn spat, jerking his hands out of Kanan’s grasp. Kanan eyed him, belatedly realizing that after two days of dehydration, the shock of cold water against Thrawn’s dry throat must have hurt. He said nothing, waiting until Thrawn was ready to drink again.

They repeated the procedure six times before Kanan called a halt to it, not wanting Thrawn to get sick. He capped the canteen again and set it aside, glancing down at the tray. 

“Any preferences?” he asked Thrawn, and then immediately felt ridiculous for asking. Thrawn didn’t make him feel any better; he cast Kanan a faintly judgmental look and didn’t deign to answer. With a sigh, Kanan selected the highest-calorie item on the tray — a densely-packed piece of bread — and then, remembering Thrawn’s dry throat, spread a generous helping of unsweetened mashed fruit over each side.

Thrawn didn’t even watch him; he seemed entirely disinterested in food. It was only when Kanan held the piece of bread to his lips and Thrawn closed his eyes that he realized it wasn’t exactly disinterest he was seeing; it was almost perfectly-hidden humiliation over being fed by someone else.

Kriff, Kanan thought. It was _really_ good Thrawn didn’t remember wetting the bed, then. He watched as Thrawn’s lips parted, his teeth flashing in the bright light of the cell before he took a small, almost delicate bite of the bread. He lifted his hands to cover his mouth a moment later, chewing economically as his eyes flickered over the two-way mirror.

Breakfast was going to take a while, Kanan suspected.


	5. Chapter 5

When Thrawn had finished a third of the tray — all he wanted, he told Kanan in a toneless voice — and drained the canteen completely, Kanan stood, brushing the crumbs off his shirt and setting the tray on the floor. He turned his back to the two-way mirror deliberately, so Kallus and the others at least wouldn’t be able to see his face.

“Do you understand what’s going to happen next?” he asked, his voice neutral.

Thrawn looked up at him placidly, his face impossible to read. He didn’t answer.

“Kallus is going to lead the interrogation,” Kanan said. Forcing himself to sound threatening when what he was really doing was issuing a warning, he added, “Answer his questions honestly and it’ll be quick and painless.”

“I don’t think he’ll be asking many questions today,” said Thrawn levelly, sitting back against the wall. “Standard Imperial procedure is to break the prisoner’s spirit first. Agent Kallus was always an avid follower of that particular decree.”

His eyes shifted over Kanan’s shoulder, to the two-way mirror, and then back again without a change in expression. 

“Then do as he says,” said Kanan, though it broke him a little to say it. “This doesn’t have to be a torture session, Thrawn. We’re not Imperials. This can be a nice, easy chat over dinner instead of an interrogation, if you cooperate.”

“Do you think so?” asked Thrawn mildly. 

Kanan didn’t answer. He stared down at Thrawn, lounging on his prisoner’s bunk as if he owned it, with his hands and feet bound. He couldn’t tell — honestly — if it was a put-on or if Thrawn was really so confident that he’d be fine. After a long moment, with a sigh, he decided to let it go.

“Do you need the fresher before I leave?” he asked, gesturing to Thrawn’s cuffed hands. Thrawn caught the gesture and raised an eyebrow.

“You’ll remove my binders?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Kanan, before he could give himself time to doubt it. Thrawn stared at him, studying his face in silence and without any noticeable expression of his own.

Then his eyes shifted again to the two-way mirror, and from the way his gaze moved — right, pause. Right, pause. Right, pause — Kanan knew he was taking stock of the people on the other side. The people watching him. 

“I’ll be fine,” said Thrawn, his voice unreadable. “Thank you for the offer.”

Kanan shifted his feet. “I won’t be back for hours,” he warned Thrawn.

“Thank you,” said Thrawn again, now with a polite coolness. “No.”

Still, Kanan hesitated for a moment. Once Kallus got started, he wouldn’t stop for hours, he knew — and he wouldn’t take kindly to interruptions. But if Thrawn wanted to suffer — and evidently he did — that was his problem, not Kanan’s.

Or so Kanan told himself, as firmly as he could. He nodded to Thrawn in goodbye and grabbed the tray.

And as he entered the observation room, he avoided Kallus’s eyes and grimly said, “He’s yours.”

* * *

“Interesting,” Kallus murmured.

Zeb glanced sideways at him, then dropped his eyes to look at the sheets of flimsi Kallus was studying. Each one displayed a different print-out from the cell’s surveillance system; Zeb, like Kallus, had missed all the fun the night before, and he’d studied each print in detail. 

“What’s interesting?” he asked.

Kallus tapped the prints with his finger, but his eyes remained on the two-way mirror before them. With Kanan gone, Thrawn had rolled over onto his back and was resting, his eyes closed and his head turned to face the wall. 

“He doesn’t remember  _ any _ of this,” Kallus said with confidence. Zeb said nothing, and in his silence, Kallus chewed his bottom lip, clearly deep in thought. “Did you see the way he looked at the mirror when Jarrus asked if he needed to use the fresher?” he asked.

Zeb eyed Thrawn. “Yeah. Looked right at us, like he knew we were here.”

“Infrared vision,” Kallus said dismissively, as if that weren’t his point. “He didn’t want to use the fresher with anyone watching.”

Zeb turned this over in his head, but couldn’t figure out the significance. “So?” he said.

“So it embarrasses him,” said Kallus. “He’s proud. He’s an Imperial Grand Admiral. He’s used to a certain amount of personal dignity — a higher amount, actually, than most Imperial soldiers are typically provided. He was elevated through the ranks so quickly that he’s never had to shower with other troops, probably never had to change in front of anyone or share quarters. And he resents having to start now, even though he knows at least one person here has seen him nude.”

Zeb nodded impatiently through this spiel. Privately, he thought Kallus was basically describing everyone in the galaxy. There was nothing special about wanting some privacy to use the fresher — but clearly,  _ Kallus _ thought there was something there worth digging into, because he was still mulling it over and chewing his lip.

“Being raped by the pirates, too,” said Kallus absently. “He knows that at least Kanan is aware. But the rest of us …? Probably, he’s holding out hope that the information hasn’t been shared. And certainly, he’s holding out hope that it won’t happen again.”

Zeb straightened up a little at that, turning to face Kallus with narrowed eyes. “Oh?” he said, keeping his voice neutral.

Kallus turned Zeb’s glare right back on him. “It’s an interrogation,” he said. “We have to use all the tools available to us. Thrawn won’t be an easy nut to crack.”

Zeb stared at Kallus a moment longer, trying to read his face, and then nodded. He turned back to the two-way mirror and studied Thrawn instead. 

On that note, Kallus was probably right. The pirates hadn’t given Hera or Kanan any details about what they’d done, so far as Zeb knew, but they’d made it clear that they hadn’t gotten any information from him themselves. Perhaps that was just because information wasn’t their main objective; what they’d wanted was power, and pleasure, and the joy of humiliating an Imperial officer. And they’d certainly gotten that.

But would the Rebels fare any better?

He looked down at the flimsi prints again and shelved his doubts. 

“We’d better get started,” he said.

* * *

Kanan only saw the footage hours later, when he was on his lunchbreak and finally had time to catch up. He keyed his datapad to sync with the surveillance system in Thrawn’s cell and sat back, reaching for his ronto wrap.

He made it through one bite before setting it down again and keying the datapad for full sound:

“Stand up,” Kallus said.

On the bunk, Thrawn turned his head almost laconically. Kanan expected him to make a sarcastic comment — or at the very least, to calmly greet his former colleague by rank — but after a moment, Thrawn’s only reaction was to swing his bound feet off the bed and stand. He faced Kallus, his posture upright but relaxed, his elbows bent slightly to accommodate the binders around his wrists.

Kallus, like Kanan, seemed thrown off by the easy obedience. He didn’t speak for a moment, and in the silence, Kanan’s eyes flicked down and he saw the stack of flimsi in Kallus’s hands. 

“Do you know where you are?” Kallus asked, voice steady.

“A Rebel holding cell,” said Thrawn. 

“Do you know which planet?” Kallus asked.

There was a pause, and then Thrawn answered with remarkable tonelessness, “Atollon.”

A spike of cold fear went through Kanan. He sat up straight, staring in disbelief at the screen. Thrawn was correct, of course — but that was something nobody in the Empire was supposed to know. And even if Thrawn theoretically knew the location of the Rebel base — which he couldn’t, not when they’d hidden their tracks so well — how could he know that was where they’d taken him? He’d been unconscious during the transfer — and nothing could have been seen then, anyway. And since then, he’d seen nothing except the inside of his own cell. 

He shook himself, dragging his attention back to the screen even as alarm bells sounded in his head. 

“Atollon,” Kallus repeated, his voice neutral. “Interesting guess.”

Thrawn’s face was expressionless.

“And do you know your name?” Kallus asked.

“I am of sound mind,” said Thrawn evenly.

And then, so fast that it even made Kanan flinch, an electric prod whipped out from Kallus’s side and hit Thrawn square in the ribs, knocking him back. With his feet bound, he couldn’t keep his balance; he fell, and he fell  _ hard _ , the metal edge of his bunk striking him in the back as he went down. He kept his head up, so that it didn’t hit the tile floor, but only just.

There was a moment of silence, filled only by the sizzle of electricity. Slowly, but with a grace that suggested the prod hadn’t hurt him too badly, Thrawn adjusted his position until he was sitting comfortably with his back against the bed.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” said Kallus calmly. “Stand and answer me correctly.”

Thrawn stood, his every movement measured but composed. When he found his feet, his posture was still relaxed.

“My name is Thrawn,” he said. 

“Interesting,” said Kallus, his tone light. “Because last night, you told us something very different.”

There was a long pause as Thrawn turned that over in his mind. He tilted his head a little, studying Kallus. It was clear from the blankness of his expression that he didn’t remember what he told them, but after a moment, he said, “My full name is Mitth’raw’nuruodo. Thrawn is my core name.”

“That’s not quite what you told us, either,” said Kallus, still lightly. He kept the electric prod pointed at Thrawn, but held it at his side, so that Kanan couldn’t tell if he intended to use it. “You were a bit dazed, so I understand if you’ve forgotten. But before you told us your name was Mitth’raw’nuruodo—”

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” said Thrawn, his pronunciation subtly different. 

Kallus lifted the electric prod, the gesture slow and eloquent. Thrawn stayed silent.

“Before you told us your name was Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” said Kallus again, and this time Thrawn didn’t correct him, “you told us your name was Kivu. Why lie?”

Thrawn didn’t answer. His face was unreadable. Casually — so casually that Kanan didn’t fully believe he was going to do it — Kallus stepped forward and pressed the electric prod against Thrawn’s ribs. 

Again, Thrawn fell to the floor. This time, he landed on his knees, with Kallus taking a hasty step back so Thrawn didn’t touch him on his way down. The impact of Thrawn’s knees against the tile was audible, but he didn’t make a sound. His whole body had gone limp the moment the prod touched him, but by the time he hit the ground, he was already shaking himself and trying to stand.

“My people cycle through many names,” he said as he shifted position, getting his cuffed feet beneath him. He rolled his shoulders as he stood. “Many cultures do.”

“Your people,” Kallus repeated. He twisted the electric prod in his hand. “And what exactly are you, then?”

“You know this,” said Thrawn, a bit of weariness showing through in his tone. Two hits from the electric prod, Kanan thought, each one strong enough to knock him off his feet. What voltage did Kallus have it set to? “You’ve read my file,” Thrawn continued. “You accessed it twice while you were aboard the Chimaera.”

“Then say it,” said Kallus lightly, as if it didn’t matter to him either way. Thrawn studied him for a moment; he spoke a half-second before Kallus raised the electric prod again.

“Chiss,” he said, his voice unbothered and calm. 

“Very good.” Kallus didn’t just lower the prod; he thumbed the switch, turning it off. Kanan studied the screen, but he couldn’t spot any visible signs of relief in Thrawn. He watched as Kallus pocketed the electric prod and took a seat, relaxing in his chair as he shuffled the stack of flimsi before him.

“Tell me what you remember about the pirates,” Kallus said.

Thrawn inclined his head slightly, looking down at Kallus. “Not much,” he said.

“Well, they raped you,” said Kallus at once, peering up at Thrawn with feigned surprise. “Surely you remember  _ that _ .”

There was a brief silence as Thrawn digested this. Even through the datapad, Kanan could see faint lines of discomfort on his face.

“Yes,” he said, voice soft but still unbothered. “Parts.”

“Parts?” said Kallus, eyebrows raised. 

The pause was longer this time.

“You wish for a detailed account?” asked Thrawn. From the tone of his voice, he might have been asking Kallus whether he wanted blue milk or meiloorun juice with his breakfast. Kallus responded to the tone with a slow smile.

“Maybe later,” he said, and Kanan got the impression that there was no ‘maybe’ involved at all. Kallus held the flimsi sheets up, his smile growing larger. “You remember what happened when you came here?” he asked.

Thrawn eyed the flimsi sheets, but they were turned away from him.

“I recall I was bathed,” he said eventually. “By Kanan Jarrus. And I recall Hera Syndulla covered in case of attack.”

“Nothing else?” asked Kallus, raising an eyebrow. When Thrawn didn’t answer him, he said, “You don’t remember why you were bathed?”

A beat of silence. With a carefully moderated dignity in his voice, Thrawn said, “The pirates.”

“The pirates,” Kallus said, with clear satisfaction. He hissed out a breath through his teeth and shook his head slowly, as if considering this option and dismissing it after serious thought. He flipped through the sheets of flimsi and shook his head again. “No,” he said. “What happened is you lost control of yourself, Admiral.” He glanced up, checking Thrawn’s impassive face. “You pissed your pants,” he said. 

Silently, Kallus turned the first sheet of flimsi so Thrawn could see. It was a screenshot from the night before: Thrawn, fast asleep with his hands and feet bound, his clothes and mattress both soaked with urine. Thrawn’s eyes darted over the print, taking it all in. 

“You wet the bed,” Kallus said, watching Thrawn’s face with scarcely-hidden satisfaction. “Like a frightened child.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Thrawn didn’t look away from the image of himself; he seemed determined to memorize it. Finally, slowly, Kallus shifted the pile of flimsi around. 

“Jarrus  _ did _ bathe you,” he said levelly. “And Syndulla did watch, yes. As did most everyone else in the base. It was Bridger and Wren who spotted you wetting the bed, in case you wondered. They were on watch at the time.”

He selected another piece of flimsi and turned it to face Thrawn. This one showed Thrawn in the nude, supported by Kanan as he faced the camera head-on. Thrawn studied this one with the same lack of expression as the first.

“Of course,” said Kallus, letting Thrawn study the image to his heart’s content, “you  _ were _ unconscious at the time, so perhaps it’s not quite as shameful as it might have been. But that wasn’t the only time you lost control. Here we have you in the shower…”

In the courtyard, Kanan turned his datapad off in disgust. He looked down at his tray of food and knew at once that he wouldn’t be finishing it. The timestamp on the surveillance footage told him that part of the interrogation had occurred four hours ago, shortly after Kanan left the observation room. 

Kallus had directly counteracted Kanan’s best efforts to avoid unnecessary embarrassment for their prisoner. He’d done it knowingly, too, and that didn’t bode well for the rest of the interrogation at all.

After taking a moment to center himself and slow his breathing, Kanan headed to Thrawn’s cell.


	6. Chapter 6

“What happened to his mattress?” Kanan asked.

Through the two-way mirror of the observation room, he could see Thrawn sitting on the cold tile floor with his back against the wall; at some point in the past four hours, Thrawn’s eyes had been covered with a strip of black cloth tied behind his ears. The bunk beside him had been stripped bare, leaving it no more comfortable than the rest of the cell, and Thrawn’s shoulders were tight with barely-suppressed shivers.

“He hasn’t earned it,” said Kallus levelly, his eyes on Thrawn. He missed the incredulous look Kanan shot him. “He can have his mattress back when he’s ready to stop soiling it.”

Kanan processed this, rankling with second-hand embarrassment at the terminology Kallus used, then turned back to the mirror to study Thrawn. He remembered what he’d seen on the surveillance footage and tried to convince himself there was some other explanation than the obvious, which was that Kallus had done this out of pure malice.

“He wet the bed again?” he asked, trying desperately to have some faith in his ally. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kallus didn’t respond, but Ezra turned to face Kanan with a strange frown that looked half-guilty and half-defensive. 

“Not today,” he said.

There was a beat of frosty silence. _Not today_ — that meant there had been only the one incident, before the sedative effect wore off. The incident Kanan had already taken care of, even assuring Thrawn as he bathed him that he wasn’t in trouble and wouldn’t be punished. Kanan studied Kallus intensely, trying to force the other man to look at him, but Kallus’s face was like stone. He seemed unaffected by Kanan’s stare.

“You mean he’s only had _one_ accident and you took his mattress away?” Kanan asked. When nobody answered him right away, he threw his hands up in exasperation. “It wasn’t even malicious behavior! He didn’t do it on _purpose_. He was sedated and stunned — he’d been asleep for two days. Anyone would lose control in a situation like that.”

Kallus reacted to that, but not the way Kanan had hoped. He turned his head to look at Ezra, sharing a look that Kanan couldn’t see but didn’t like nonetheless. When he finally graced Kanan with his attention, it was clear he was repressing the urge to roll his eyes. 

“This is standard procedure for interrogation,” he said. “You don’t get answers by coddling the prisoner and treating him like a guest at a five-star Coruscanti resort.”

Kanan tamped down on the anger that surged through him at those words. “It’s not _coddling_ someone to provide them with a mattress,” he said, keeping his tone as even and unconcerned as he could. “Especially since the mattress we’ve provided him with is little better than a rubber exercise mat.”

He reached past Ezra and stabbed the holo playback button, scrubbing backward through the surveillance footage and watching everything that happened with a scowl on his face. He watched as Kallus, onscreen, removed Thrawn’s shirt, then examined the wounds Thrawn had sustained during his week with the pirates and ran the electric prod up his spine, forcing him to his stomach on the tile floor. 

Roughly an hour ago, according to the timestamp, there was an injection of something — Kanan couldn’t be sure what — and that was when the first signs of pain began to show. And they showed _badly_. No sooner had the needle slipped beneath his skin than Thrawn started to writhe, his skull crashing against the floor, his eyes squeezed shut and his teeth bared. 

After that, there was nothing. Just the blindfold and the empty bed, and Thrawn sitting beside it on the floor, still shivering from the pain.

“What did you give him?” asked Kanan, voice flat.

Kallus was watching the footage too, but with clinical detachment. His arms were crossed lazily over his chest. “It’s a serum to heighten his sensitivity,” he said. “Light, sound, pain. It’ll wear off by tomorrow. Just makes him more acquiescent.”

Kanan digested that, examining the live feed of Thrawn’s cell. “Acquiescent,” he repeated. “But you’re not _asking_ him anything.”

Kallus’s lips twitched. “No.”

“So what’s the point of it?” Kanan asked, barely managing to hold his temper in check. “It’s just plain torture — _Ezra_.”

Ezra looked away from the two-way mirror, jumping in surprise. He turned to face Kanan with unmistakable guilt on his face, but his voice was all teenage sullenness as he said, “What?”

“How can you watch this?” Kanan demanded. “You’re a _Jedi_ , and this is what you do with your spare time? Come down to the observation room to watch a man suffer?”

Ezra’s face twisted; he looked to Kallus for support.

“He’s not a man,” said Kallus evenly. “He’s an alien, and he’s the enemy. An Imperial, Jarrus. This is how we break him; if you can’t stomach it, then feel free to walk away.”

Kanan didn’t even bother to glance at Kallus. He kept his eyes locked on Ezra’s, his face hard and cold, until Ezra looked away. With a scowl, Ezra pushed past Kanan and out the door.

Kallus didn’t seem to take the loss of this particular battle hard. He turned back to watch Thrawn, allowing himself a small smile.

“The boy would make an excellent interrogator, you know,” he said, staring at the transparisteel. “He’s soft, but he’s curious, too. And he’s got a lot of rage.”

“You think that’s the main qualifier for being an interrogator?” Kanan asked him. “Rage?”

Slowly, Kallus turned his head and glanced Kanan’s way. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Rage and cruelty are useful tools, in the right hands.”

For a long moment, Kanan only stared through the transparisteel. 

“You worked with Thrawn,” he said finally. “Was he cruel?”

Kallus snorted at that. “He’s the Butcher of Batonn, remember? Thirty-thousand civilians died at his command. I’d say he qualifies.”

Kanan said nothing. What Kallus said was true, but something in the Force tugged at Kanan’s soul, whispering to him to look at things another way. 

But there _was_ no other way to look at them, he told himself, frustrated. What Kallus said was true; Kanan could do his best to treat Thrawn with dignity, but he had no business feeling _sympathy_ for the other man.

He was still watching Thrawn through the two-way mirror when Kallus pushed a datacard his way.

“There’s room for you in this arrangement, you know,” Kallus said softly, keeping his eyes forward. “You’ve looked over the footage from the last four hours, yes?”

Kanan nodded, his throat tight.

“And you didn’t like what you saw,” said Kallus shrewdly. 

Kanan couldn’t deny it.

“We can use that,” said Kallus, still watching Thrawn. “Sheer torture and cruelty — that breaks a man fast. But you know what breaks him faster? Instability, uncertainty, fear. And the best way to ensure that he breaks is to give him someone he thinks it’s safe to talk to. Someone who shows him sympathy and kindness, who doesn’t judge him for what he’s done.”

There was a sour taste in Kanan’s mouth, but he nodded. “You want to play good cop/bad cop,” he said bitterly.

Kallus raised his eyebrows, finally glancing Kanan’s way. “You’d make an excellent good cop,” he said lightly. “Really, you’ve already started.”

Kanan could only scowl in response. Kallus was right, in a way. He studied Thrawn, who was still trembling on the cell floor, and sighed.

Kallus tapped the datacard. “You’ll find all the information you need about the serum I used in there,” he said. “I’m going to step out for a few hours. The prisoner’s all yours.”

He left without another word, leaving Kanan alone with the datacard.

And Thrawn.

With a deep sigh, Kanan pulled out his datapad and started to read.


	7. Chapter 7

Kanan found Thrawn’s mattress stuffed in a storage room. He bundled it under his arm and grabbed a musty old blanket as well, balling it up so the ends didn’t trail on the ground. The pillow was nowhere to be seen, and he thought sourly of Ezra and Zeb, wondering which of them had taken it for themselves. 

He reached out to Thrawn through the Force before he entered the cell, hesitating for a long moment. He’d read the full datafile on the serum, and now, by connecting with Thrawn’s mind, he got a taste of just exactly how distressing it could really be. 

The slightest sound in his cell — even the dripping of water from the leaky shower head — was enough to send waves of nausea and pain through Thrawn. The blindfold over his eyes was completely necessary, but still didn’t manage to block out everything he needed; even filtered through the black cloth, the lights of the cell were so harsh and bright that they gave Thrawn a throbbing headache. His teeth were gritted in pain, his eyes leaking water. The smell of blood and singed flesh was enough to make him gag.

Outside the cell, Kanan hesitated, shifting the mattress under his arms. With a deep breath and a great deal of concentration, he reached out again and slowly — gently — shut Thrawn’s senses down. It was the only way to cope with the serum, Kanan knew. He watched through the transparisteel as Thrawn froze in place, forgetting to breathe as his sense of smell gradually disappeared.

Sight followed it. Thrawn turned his head minutely, cocking it at different angles as he tried to see through the cloth.

Next was his hearing. As soon as it was gone, Kanan let his hand drop and opened the door to Thrawn’s cell.

Something — maybe a change in air pressure, maybe a sudden draft — alerted Thrawn to the opening of the door even with his senses turned off. He angled his head toward Kanan, going utterly still with his back against the wall. 

Kanan walked past Thrawn, placing his mattress on the empty bed frame without a word — not that Thrawn could hear him if he did talk. He let the blanket drop down on top of it, unfolded, and then circled back around until he was standing in front of Thrawn.

A dozen different instincts warred inside Kanan. The cell was intensely cold — far colder than it should have been — and he wanted desperately to take the blanket and wrap it around Thrawn’s shoulders. Instead, he walked back outside, quickly adjusting the climate control (someone, he noticed darkly, had turned it down to only a few degrees above freezing). When he walked back in, the temperature hadn’t changed yet.

He knelt in front of Thrawn, trying to figure out the best way to go about this. His mind touched Thrawn’s, but just as it was impossible to read Thrawn’s alien thoughts and emotions, it seemed impossible to send any of his own — Kanan tried to calm him down mentally, to soothe him, but nothing got through. 

And in the meantime, Thrawn watched him — as much as he could. He kept his face angled toward Kanan at all times, as if he had some sort of sixth sense that let him know there was someone in front of him. His lips were pressed into a thin line, his face drawn and pale beneath the blindfold.

With a sigh, Kanan reached up slowly — very slowly — and touched the back of Thrawn’s head. Thrawn jerked violently, and the only thing that saved him from crashing his skull against the stone wall was Kanan’s hand, which took the brunt of the blow as he cupped Thrawn’s head in his palm.

“Shh, shh,” Kanan said automatically, even though he knew there was no point. He waited for Thrawn to go still again, and eventually, Thrawn did, but his shoulders were so tense that it looked painful, and his chest was heaving. Ignoring the sting of pain in his knuckles from where they’d hit the wall, Kanan brushed his fingers over the knot on the blindfold and tugged on it, telegraphing what he was doing before he actually untied it.

The blindfold fell away. Wide, glazed eyes stared back at Kanan, not seeing a thing. 

“It’s me,” Kanan said, keeping his hand on the back of Thrawn’s head. Thrawn flinched again, and Kanan’s fingers tightened reflexively in his hair. Immediately, Kanan regretted this reflex; no sooner had he done it than Thrawn’s lips parted, his breath escaping him in harsh, shallow gasps as he started to hyperventilate. He was visibly shaking now, and it was ten times worse than the shivering Kanan had seen before, because now he knew it was caused by fear, not by the cold.

The serum heightened Thrawn’s sensitivity to pain, he remembered, and guiltily, he took his hand away from Thrawn’s head. A quick glimpse into Thrawn’s mind showed him pain levels that were only barely tolerable — searing, mind-numbing pain, like Thrawn had been scalped, when really all Kanan had done was pull his hair. 

Drawing back, Kanan tried to reorient himself. Thrawn had no way of knowing who was in the room with him — and after four hours of torture with Kallus, it stood to reason that he would panic now, knowing there was at least one person kneeling before him. To combat that, Kanan could think of only one thing.

He reached forward, drawing Thrawn’s cuffed hands away from his lap. He could feel Thrawn’s fingers trembling against his own, and for a long moment, he just held him, letting Thrawn acclimate both to the warmth of Kanan’s hands and the feeling of someone else’s skin against his. 

The shaking didn’t stop, and Thrawn was still breathing harsh and fast. Carefully, Kanan manipulated Thrawn’s clenched fists until both hands were open. He raised Thrawn’s hands to his own face then, letting Thrawn’s fingers trail against his goatee — and the smooth skin over his cheeks where Kallus had sideburns — and finally, he bent his head down and let Thrawn feel his ponytail. Thrawn gasped, his fingers tangling in Kanan’s hair hard enough to hurt, but Kanan didn’t react. He forced himself to hold still a moment longer, until he was certain Thrawn knew who he was.

“Better?” Kanan asked, though he knew Thrawn couldn’t hear him. He guided Thrawn’s bound hands away from his hair, settling them instead on Thrawn’s knees. Kanan kept a gentle grip on them, careful not to squeeze in case the serum turned what was meant to be a comforting gesture into a painful grip. 

Thrawn was not quite so careful. He clung to Kanan’s hand almost ferociously, refusing to let go. His jaw clenched and his lips moved, but only slightly; Kanan could just barely make out Thrawn’s voice as he said, “Kanan…”

Kanan rubbed his thumb over the back of Thrawn’s hand in response. He waited until the rapid up-and-down movement of Thrawn’s chest had calmed a little — though not by much — before he slowly got to his feet, keeping a firm grip on Thrawn’s hands the entire time. 

He pulled once, gently, and Thrawn caught his drift. His wrists twisted around until he could grab onto Kanan’s hands, holding tight and breathing fast as Kanan pulled him to his feet. Thrawn’s shaking intensified, and he refused to let go when Kanan tried to adjust his grip.

“It’s okay,” said Kanan, sending a useless wave of soothing thoughts Thrawn’s way. “I’m just—” He pried Thrawn’s fingers off his wrist and felt, through the Force, a surge of agony, as if he’d snapped them instead of just moving them away. “I’m just trying to get you on the bed,” Kanan finished, gritting his teeth. 

He forced Thrawn’s hands off him at last and moved his own hands to Thrawn’s shoulders, trying to guide him backward toward the edge of the bed. Thrawn closed his eyes, raising his bound hands as if to protect his face. A low sound escaped his throat, sounding almost like a whimper.

“It’s okay,” said Kanan firmly. “Really, it’s—”

He cut himself off with a shake of the head, remembering how pointless it was to talk. He stretched out to the Force instead, taking a look inside Thrawn’s mind. He still couldn’t get a good grasp on Thrawn’s emotions — if the panic was genuine, then Kanan had no way of knowing — but he could tell that, despite the blindness, Thrawn could still see a vague, warm glow where Kanan stood.

Infrared vision, Kanan realized. That explained how Thrawn had known where to look — and earlier, how he’d known Zeb and Sabine were watching him through the transparisteel. But now, either because of the serum or the panic attack or because of the unshed tears in Thrawn’s eyes, his infrared vision had gone blurry, making it seem like the room was filled with people. 

Experimentally, Kanan lifted one of his hands off Thrawn’s shoulder and waved it in front of his unseeing eyes. Thrawn flinched; through his mind, Kanan saw what looked like the heat signatures of at least six people surging forward at once.

“Okay,” Kanan said, still holding Thrawn upright as he tried to think things through. If the blurry vision was really caused by unshed tears, then at least Kanan had a way to counteract that. 

He held Thrawn steady with one hand and dug in his pocket with the other, pulling out a small, soft piece of cloth he used to clean his lightsaber hilt. He’d put it through the sonic laundry earlier that morning, so now it was at least serviceable as a handkerchief. Gently, he lifted his left hand from Thrawn’s shoulder and ran it over his collarbones, up his neck, and let it rest against his cheek, taking his time in the hope that Thrawn wouldn’t freak out.

After a moment, with Thrawn’s breath still coming in and out in dangerously shallow gasps, Kanan lifted his thumb and brushed it over Thrawn’s eyelid, trying to gently get it to close so he could — theoretically — wipe away any resulting tears with his handkerchief.

It didn’t work. When Kanan’s thumb brushed Thrawn’s eyelid, Thrawn’s breath caught in his throat and he went utterly still. He didn’t flinch or whimper this time; he didn’t even close his eyes by reflex, like most people would if they were in danger.

A soft hissing noise filled the room. Kanan kept his eyes on Thrawn’s face, studying the frozen expression there with concern — and then he heard the pattering sound of water hitting the tile floor.

Looking down, he saw a dark wet patch spreading between Thrawn’s legs. 

“Oh, shit,” Kanan breathed, frustration and guilt welling up inside him. He watched as twin trails of urine streaked down Thrawn’s shaking legs, darkening the fabric of his sweatpants as his bladder involuntarily voided. Even with his connection to Thrawn’s mind, Kanan couldn’t tell if it was fear-induced or if he’d simply been holding it for too long — and either way, it presented an all-new problem. 

He couldn’t bathe Thrawn like this — not with the serum in his system, and not with his senses of sight, hearing, and smell all taken away. He was pretty sure that any temperature of water would be torture to Thrawn right now, unless Kanan took away his sense of touch as well — and to do that would only make the panic attack worse, he suspected.

He glanced at Thrawn’s hooded, unseeing eyes. There was only one option available to him, really, as much as it pained him.

He cupped Thrawn’s face in his hands, reached out to the Force, and took a deep breath. He let Thrawn’s sense of hearing fade back into existence, just enough so he could hear Kanan’s next words.

“Go to sleep,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

In the aftermath of his Force-laden command, Kanan lowered Thrawn’s body to the cell floor, avoiding the puddle of urine there and thinking hard on what he’d done. There were several issues with his plan of action, and the first and most obvious one was that while forcing Thrawn to sleep certainly solved the panic attack issue, it didn’t do anything to stop the effects of the serum. Kanan couldn’t block the effects and keep Thrawn unconscious at the same time — which meant he still couldn’t bathe Thrawn until the serum wore off.

Which, according to Kallus’s datafile, meant he still had several hours to go.

Kanan checked his chrono and bit his lip, keeping one hand beneath Thrawn’s head to protect him from the hard stone floor. Even while unconscious, Thrawn’s face twitched in discomfort; it could have been from any number of things — the stone floor beneath him, or the cooling wet patch between his legs, or even Kanan’s fingers in his hair. 

And therein lay the problem. Kanan had to figure out a solution that would _lessen_ Thrawn’s pain, not make it worse. 

With a truncated sigh, he shifted Thrawn’s head to his lap and pressed the call button on his comlink.

“Sabine,” he said, his voice clipped. “I have a mission for you.”

* * *

Sabine was scheduled to go off-planet for a supply run within the hour, so she made it fast. She’d never been in Kanan’s quarters before, and she had to suppress the almost overbearing urge to snoop. Instead, she focused on the first half of her mission, gathering the items Kanan had requested — a thick sweater from the drawer beneath his bed; what he called “the good towel” from his refresher; a pair of cotton sleep-trousers; winter socks made from some type of thick animal wool; and a long-sleeved undershirt which was _not_ hanging up in Kanan’s closet as he told her over comm, but was instead tossed carelessly over the back of his desk chair.

Sabine folded each item and bundled them up in her arms before calling Kanan on her comlink.

“Delivery for Kanan Jarrus,” she said. “Where do you want me to bring these things?”

There was a pause before Kanan answered — and to Sabine’s surprise, it wasn’t on the public channel. Instead, the red light for a private channel blinked off and on until Sabine pressed the answer button.

“Kanan?” she said warily.

“The holding cell,” said Kanan. “Quickly, please.”

Oh. Sabine stared at the comlink for a moment, reevaluating her vague idea of why Kanan needed these clothes. She took off for the holding cell at a subdued pace, thinking too hard to walk particularly fast. She knew Kallus had started his interrogation today; Zeb and Ezra had told her a little about it, and she’d made them promise that she could take the evening shift so she could see, too. 

Only, from what they’d told her, Kanan wasn’t supposed to be there at all. She frowned as she crossed the courtyard to the holding cell, and that frown grew even deeper when she entered the observation room and found it empty. She peeked through the transparisteel, but all she could see was Kanan, kneeling on the ground with his back to the window; of Thrawn, all that was visible were his outstretched legs and bare feet.

What the hell had happened? Where had everyone gone?

Sabine hit the door release and stepped inside, taken aback immediately by the chill in the air.

“Jeez, Kanan,” she said as the door shut behind her. “It feels like autumn in here.”

Kanan glanced over his shoulder at her, his face carved from stone. “Better than it was a few minutes ago,” he said darkly. He held his hand out, but didn’t float the items in Sabine’s arms toward him through the Force — another oddity, Sabine thought. Instead, he waited for her to step forward and hand them to him.

She did so, but her eyes were on Thrawn’s unconscious form the whole time. She glanced down from the tear tracks running down his temples from his closed eyes to the wet patch between his legs and felt her lips tug upward in a dry smile.

“Thank you,” said Kanan curtly, taking the pile of clothes from her hands with a roughness that wiped her smirk away. He dug in his vest pocket and pulled out a credit stick, handing it to her without even glancing her way. She examined it for a moment in silent curiosity, then tucked it into her pocket.

“What happened?” asked Sabine, dragging her eyes back toward Thrawn. She moved her foot, intending to nudge him with her toe, but Kanan spotted her out of the corner of his eye and his hand shot out to stop her, firmly shoving her boot back.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he said.

“I was just checking—”

“Sabine,” Kanan snapped, his voice strained. “Don’t.”

For a moment, Sabine said nothing, her cheeks flushed with shame at the admonishment — though what she’d done to deserve an admonishment in the first place, she wasn’t sure. She watched as Kanan set the pile of clothes down on the tiles behind him, sifting through them until he found the folded towel. 

“So … he pissed himself again?” Sabine prompted him.

The muscles in Kanan’s cheeks seemed to tighten. He didn’t look her way.

“Was it Kallus’s fault?” asked Sabine.

“Sabine,” said Kanan, his voice softer now, “it’s none of your business. I need you to make an extra stop on your supply run.”

Sabine tilted her head to the side. “Oh?”

“We need extra clothes for him,” said Kanan, his tone difficult to read. “They can all be identical if that makes it easier for you, just make sure to get a decent amount of everything. Shirts, sweaters, trousers — probably just sleepwear should be fine — underwear and socks. _Warm_ socks.”

Sabine wrinkled her nose at the thought of picking out underwear for Grand Admiral Thrawn. She took another peek at his wet crotch, trying to estimate his size. 

“And I want you to pick up a pillow, pillowcase, and a few extra blankets,” Kanan added. “Use my credit stick.” He glanced up at her and his eyes narrowed as he shot her a sharp glare. “ _Regular_ underwear,” he snapped. “Nothing funny.”

“I would never,” said Sabine, putting an innocent look on her face.

Kanan gave her a dry look — and, Sabine noticed with a surge of confusion and unease, he didn’t look amused in the slightest. Ezra had told her how snappish Kanan was being, but she’d dismissed it as Ezra just exaggerating everything or being oversensitive, like usual. But it seemed like he was right — for whatever reason, Kanan had made Thrawn’s dignity and well-being his concern.

“Alright,” she said, making her voice sound neutral. “I’ll see what I can do. You want me to bring them straight here?”

Kanan shook his head. The corners of his eyes tightened. “Comm me first when you get back. I’ll meet you.”

“Okay,” said Sabine uncertainly. Why, though? Did he not want Kallus to find out? Or did he just want to delay it for a while? 

She blinked, startled out of her thoughts when Kanan held a little square of cloth out to her — the same one he used to clean his lightsaber hilt.

"Go get this wet," he said without looking her way. "Lukewarm water, please."

Sabine stared at it for a moment before obeying. She crossed to the tiny fresher in Thrawn's cell — really, it was nothing more than a shallow sink and a toilet — and tested the temperature of the water before running the cloth beneath it. When she came back to Kanan, he set the washcloth aside at once and picked up the towel instead.

“Go now,” said Kanan briskly, shaking the towel out. “You don’t need to see this.”

Sabine glanced down at Thrawn, his head resting on Kanan’s lap, and nodded. 

She could watch it all on the cell’s surveillance feed later, anyway.

* * *

With Sabine gone, Kanan started the arduous process of undressing and cleaning Thrawn — or cleaning him as much as he could. 

He shifted Thrawn’s head off his lap and onto the folded pile of clothes first, freeing himself up to move around more. Scooting farther down the side of Thrawn’s body, Kanan hooked his fingers in Thrawn’s waistband and pulled the wet sweatpants down as slowly and gently as he could. Still, through Thrawn’s sleeping mind, he caught a flash of the drag of fabric against his skin — a feeling that the serum turned into the scrape of a knife.

The chill of the floor against his bare thighs was no better, and Kanan grit his teeth and worked a little faster. He got the pants down to Thrawn’s ankles before he stopped, unlocking the cuffs as hastily as possible and letting them fall to the tile floor.

He regretted this careless gesture an instant later, when the sound of the cuffs hitting the tile shattered Thrawn’s unconscious state. His eyes snapped open and then squeezed shut in agony, his bound hands coming up by instinct in an effort to cover his ears. 

“Shh,” said Kanan by instinct, stretching out a hand. He regretted speaking immediately, too. The hiss of his voice between his teeth made Thrawn slam his head back in pain, and only the soft cushion of clothes beneath his head saved him from a concussion.

“Sleep,” said Kanan, cringing in sympathy at the sound of his own voice. He reached out to Thrawn with the Force, smoothing out all traces of alertness in his mind. “Sleep,” he said again — and this time it worked completely. Thrawn’s eyelids dropped; the tension in his body abruptly faded away. 

Kanan hesitated a moment, making sure Thrawn was fully asleep again, and then he tugged the wet sweatpants off Thrawn’s feet, leaving him bare from the waist down.

He uncuffed Thrawn’s hands next, and this time he made sure to deposit them gently and silently on top of the discarded trousers. He lifted Thrawn into a sitting position, supporting his head all the while, and wrangled the shirt off him as best he could. The hem of it was wet with urine, and he had to be careful not to let it touch Thrawn’s face as he pulled it off.

He lowered Thrawn back down and picked up the towel again. There was little he could do to clean Thrawn except wipe him down, but he could at least do that, could at least make sure he was dry and — fingers crossed — prevent a rash. If Thrawn’s species even got rashes. He ran a wet washcloth over Thrawn’s abdomen, checking in on him to make sure the fabric wasn’t coarse enough to hurt and that the temperature of the water—

Well, the temperature _did_ hurt him. It was only lukewarm, and it still set Thrawn’s nerve endings alight. Kanan froze, watching as Thrawn’s lips twitched back to reveal gritted teeth; his mind surged toward consciousness until Kanan pulled the washcloth away. 

Okay. Just the towel, then.

Kanan set the washcloth aside and picked up the towel instead, connecting to Thrawn’s mind more thoroughly as he patted the towel over Thrawn’s thighs and lower legs, soaking up every trace of urine. He hesitated before moving up again; keeping what Thrawn had been through in mind, this right here would be the worst time for him to wake up. With gentle hands, Kanan passed the towel over Thrawn’s hips and between his legs. His cock was flaccid but still long and thick — a thought that Kanan couldn’t tolerate in himself, so he pushed it away and focused instead on what Thrawn was feeling. 

The feeling of Kanan’s hand on his cock was abrasive, the skin there more sensitive than anywhere else Kanan had washed. Pain built up quickly, low-level but pervasive, and it was a relief to them both when Kanan finished and moved away. 

He folded the towel and tossed it aside, letting it land on the small puddle where Thrawn had been standing when he wet himself. Then, carefully, he lifted Thrawn’s head from the pile of clothes and sorted through them until he found the pajama Sabine had chosen.

With a little assistance from the Force — and sacrificing his grip on Thrawn’s mind somewhat to do so — Kanan managed to get the trousers onto him, pulling them snug around Thrawn’s narrow hips. He could still see the outline of Thrawn’s cock through the fabric, and the realization made his mouth go dry for reasons he couldn’t entirely explain.

He moved on swiftly. He pushed Thrawn into a sitting position again and pulled his back up against Kanan’s chest, until Thrawn was sleeping more or less in his lap. From there, it was easier to get his undershirt and sweater on, and when that was done, Kanan let Thrawn’s head rest against his shoulder and reached forward as far as he could, his fingers encircling Thrawn’s ankle and pulling his bare foot up.

He worked Thrawn’s feet into the socks one at a time, with Thrawn’s soft blue-black hair tickling his cheek the whole time. It was an agonizing relief to be this close to someone, soaking up their body heat, after kneeling for so long in the cold cell — but the relief wasn’t mutual. Thrawn processed Kanan’s own body heat with a confusion of neural signals, pleasure and pain firing off one another enough to make him grimace in his sleep.

Kanan checked his chrono. It would still be at least an hour and a half before Sabine returned. With no other options, he lifted Thrawn off the floor and lowered him onto the narrow mattress he’d found in the supply closet. Kanan watched him for a moment, curled limply on his side, and felt something in his chest aching.

With a sigh, he looked down at the items on the ground — the towel, now soaked through, and the discarded stuncuffs. He couldn’t let Kallus see the surveillance footage, he realized with a heavy sinking feeling in his gut. If he saw Thrawn’s panic attack — not to mention the humiliation that came after — he’d take advantage of it without a second thought, and something inside Kanan — maybe his moral compass, maybe the scant few years of proper Jedi training he’d received — simply wouldn’t allow that.

He pulled the musty old blanket over Thrawn’s sleeping form, gathered the towel off the floor, and left.

* * *

When Kallus finally made his way back to the observation room, he found two surprises waiting for him. The first was what seemed like a glitch in the surveillance system — a glitch which had scrubbed away random scenes from the past six hours, eating up footage here and there. The randomness seemed like a poor attempt to hide what must have been deliberate sabotage on Jarrus’s part—

Because the second surprise was that Jarrus was still here. Not in the observation; in the cell.

Sitting on the prisoner’s bed.

Kallus blinked, tilting his head as he stared through the transparisteel. Thrawn was either unconscious or asleep, his lips parted slightly, one hand lying open on the mattress near his face. His hands weren’t bound anymore, Kallus noticed with a flare of irritation. And Jarrus sat on the mattress next to him, his legs over the side and his elbows resting on his knees while Thrawn leaned into him, curling around Jarrus’s body like a sleeping Loth-pup.

Thrawn’s clothes had been changed again, Kallus noticed. The edges of his lips curled up in a hard smile. The clothes he wore now were a little too familiar, as if they’d been taken straight from someone’s quarters, and the stuncuffs he’d been wearing hours ago now lay open on the floor.

He touched his comlink, taking a quick breath in anticipation for the conversation to come. Inside the cell, in his sleep, Thrawn shifted and groaned, and Jarrus — not even blinking, not even glancing around — reached out blindly and rested his hand on Thrawn’s. There was a pause; even from the observation room, Kallus could see Thrawn’s chest rise and fall in a contented sigh as he relaxed back into a deep sleep.

He couldn’t wait to hear Jarrus’s explanation for _that_.


	9. Chapter 9

He kept his eyes closed and his breathing even, but he awoke the moment Kanan Jarrus slipped off the bed. Thrawn curled up reflexively, already missing the heat from Jarrus’s body — and more importantly, the way Jarrus blocked the camera from getting a complete view of him. He held still as Jarrus collected the stuncuffs from the ground, slipping them over Thrawn’s ankles first — gently, so as not to wake him — and then over his wrists.

And then, after running his hand softly through Thrawn’s hair, Jarrus left, and Thrawn was alone with his thoughts.

He could still feel the ache of the electric prod Kallus had used against his ribs; the serum’s effects had faded, leaving his nerves raw but nowhere near as sensitive as they had been an hour before.

Quietly, Thrawn ran the events, as much as he could remember them, back in his head, ending with the panic attack. He examined the memory from all angles before deeming it satisfactory; Jarrus’s reactions had been as good as Thrawn could hope for, well worth the trouble of forcing himself to hyperventilate, deliberately inducing his body’s panic response with a great deal of assistance from the serum. He couldn’t remember what had happened after that, but the results were obvious; he’d woken with his head in Jarrus’s lap, after all, and Jarrus’s scent was all over these new clothes he was wearing, so clearly his efforts had worked.

He let his breath out in a controlled sigh.

The first time it happened was a genuine and, indeed, necessary loss of control — and genuinely humiliating, too, when Thrawn allowed his mind to linger on it. With Agent Kallus’s sedative in his system and the sheer number of times he’d been stunned by the pirates both added to the simple passage of time, he’d had no control over his body. After 49 hours of almost uninterrupted sleep, an accident was inevitable; holding it any longer would have likely compromised his health in any case.

The following incidents had been just as unavoidable in a sense, but there was no embarrassment attached to them. To a proper warrior, every moment in life has a purpose. 

Allowing himself to be captured had a purpose. Everything that followed had a purpose as well. He could outline them all clearly in his mind, even under the effects of Kallus’s drugs.

First of all had been the pirates. It had been obvious right from the start that the little freighter called _Ulterior Motifs_ was a pirate ship, though they claimed to be traders; economically, there was no way to keep their business afloat with a ship that size, taking into account fuel expenditures, necessary repairs, and the meager returns of legally traded goods. They had to be supplementing their income somehow, and the obvious choices were smugglers, spice runners, or pirates. There were no significant traces of spice found on their ship when the _Chimaera_ first took them into custody; the custom weapons and shields affixed to the freighter identified them as pirates rather than smugglers, who typically needed only defensive weaponry.

After that simple observation, the pirates had been released without a warning, allowing them to think they’d deceived the Imperials. It had taken weeks of surveillance after that to confirm the pirates — led by a human named Tubrak — were indeed collaborating with the Rebel cell on Lothal. This much was clear from their so-called ‘shipping’ patterns and their rendezvous points, all of which circled around areas with prominent Rebel activity. 

So for months, the _Chimaera_ observed the pirates without interfering — and for months, in subtle ways, Thrawn made sure his face or name greeted the pirates at irregular intervals when they stopped planet-side to rest; he allowed Governor Pryce and Colonel Yularen to publish newsfiles with his name attached; he made appearances at private political events and allowed the press to photograph him. 

These newsfiles — and the holos with his name and face prominently displayed — made their ways to dozens of different cantinas and docking bays, until his identity as the Empire’s only nonhuman officer — and his rank as well — was cemented thoroughly into the pirates’ minds. They could not be allowed to forget him, nor his potential value to the Rebels at Lothal.

During this time, he studied their routes and took notice of one common trend: wherever the pirates had the chance to, they visited one of the Outer Rim’s elicit xeno-themed cantinas — barely-legal organizations which skirted the edge of Imperial regulations in a dozen different ways. The pirates were not necessarily there for the non-human sex slaves — spice, in its many variants, was also available at these cantinas, and they were also an ideal spot for a smuggler or pirate to find information on prospective targets.

But Thrawn took note of it nonetheless. In time, it was no difficult task to predict which planet the pirates would rest and refuel at next, and which xeno-themed cantina they would visit, based on their past expeditions and the captain’s warring tendencies toward both caution and impatience — typically, he eschewed the closest cantina to the docks, but could not strain his patience long enough to make it farther than the edge of the city.

Thrawn was waiting there for them, dressed as a civilian and making no attempt to disguise his face. His blue skin and red eyes were on prominent display. Positioning himself as a civilian instead of a Grand Admiral — who would have no legitimate reason to visit a xeno-themed cantina in the Outer Rim — ensured the pirates never suspected they were being manipulated.

And also didn’t try to interrogate him.

A small mercy, it turned out.

It was their leader Tubrak who spotted Thrawn at the bar and, after more than an hour of quiet contemplation, laid his plan out in broad strokes to his comrades. The civilian bore a strong resemblance toward Grand Admiral Thrawn, he whispered. The Rebels on Lothal would pay a high ransom for him, wouldn’t they? They could dress him up right; rough him up a little, pretend they interrogated him, and when the Rebels eventually figured out who the prisoner really was, well, how were the pirates supposed to know? They couldn’t be blamed for being deceived, and they certainly couldn’t be expected to return their finder’s fee.

Thrawn was not genuinely intoxicated when Tubrak approached him; he allowed himself to be led from the bar, stumbling and staggering as though drunk. He smiled back at the pirates when they smiled coaxingly at him. He allowed them to touch his hair, his face. He allowed them to examine his eyes.

He allowed them to tie his hands. He allowed them to take him to their ship.

He allowed them to violate him. 

(His jaw was clenched, he realized; he forced himself to relax and feign sleep.)

This was part of the plan he hadn’t shared with Faro — who needed to be in-the-know partially to cover Thrawn’s absence and partially to ensure the pirates were supplied with an authentic Grand Admiral’s uniform when they eventually tried to find one. Faro already had objections to planting Thrawn in a Rebel cell as a prisoner of war; she had been persuaded only through intense, sometimes emotional, discussion; the fact that he was, so far as they knew, the only high-ranking officer whose mind was opaque to Force-users had been what convinced her in the end (not to mention the only one self-confident enough to endure the humiliation without lasting psychological consequences). No one else could do it; ergo, he had to do it. The rape was both anticipated and necessary — purposeful, Thrawn thought — because it ensured he would be authentically injured when the Rebels finally took possession of the pirates’ prisoner.

There were two Force-users in the Rebel cell at Lothal, possibly more in other Rebel cells. Could he have faked his injuries? Yes, and rather convincingly, but not when Force-users were involved. They would know if Thrawn’s physical injuries were faked, even if they couldn’t see clearly into his mind. 

Could he have assembled his own faux-pirate group and used them instead? Also yes, but there were too many flaws in such a plan. It would have complicated the essential component of injury and interrogation; it would have taken up valuable Imperial time and resources to construct a convincing crew, especially since the ISB did not already have on in existence in this area, and it only compounded the possibility of human error ruining his plan along the way — he could not necessarily rely on his subordinates to play the part the same way he could rely on the pirates to simply be themselves. Besides, in this way, Thrawn was able to accomplish two goals at once.

While the pirates were undressing him the first time, Thrawn flinched — violently — and in a deliberate display of panic, irrationally tried to crawl to safety beneath a bench built into the bulkhead. They dragged him out a moment later and never noticed the tracker he planted there. 

In the meantime, after a week or so of tolerable, anticipated, controlled pain, Thrawn was delivered to the Rebels, successfully infiltrating their cell.

His multiple stun shots — and the long periods of unconsciousness — were not feigned. His lack of awareness was. 

He came awake when Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla were undressing him. The sympathy on Jarrus’s face was subtle, perhaps not even noticeable to Syndulla, who was more focused on Thrawn anyway. It was also entirely expected; the entire plan hinged on Jarrus’s capacity for empathy. 

This was the second reason Thrawn engineered — or put up with — or engineered, yes, that was fine. (Carefully, he moved his bound hands up to his face and kneaded his temples, turning away from the camera in his cell so they wouldn’t know he’d developed a headache). Jarrus’s capacity for empathy was the second reason he engineered his own violation at the hands of the pirates. Someone with so strong a sense of morality — someone raised in a Jedi Temple — could not help but question himself when he saw incontrovertible evidence of war crimes committed by his allies. 

Naturally, Thrawn did not expect Jarrus to immediately renounce the Rebel Alliance. But what the pirates had done to him was like an ungerminated seed; the actions of Jarrus’s own friends and allies in the Ghost Crew would, in time, allow it to grow. 

And in the meantime, Thrawn’s own trauma was entirely faked — putting the Rebels off-guard, making them think he was less dangerous than he was. Because you couldn’t be traumatized by something you planned for and anticipated. You couldn’t be traumatized by rape when — without the rapists’ knowledge — you secretly consented. The pain was real, yes, and he hadn’t been able to predict or prepare for everything they had done, but that didn’t remove the incident from his control. In a very real sense, he hadn’t been violated at all.

His breath was coming short; carefully, he massaged away the pain in his chest and forced himself to slow down until his breathing was deep and even again. 

It wasn’t even necessary for Jarrus to learn the xenophobic nature of the attack — Thrawn’s plans allowed plenty of room for minor information gaps like this — but now that he knew him better, he fully expected Jarrus to find out. The so-called rape would not leave his mind; Jarrus would feel compelled to find out more, to investigate the pirates and their activities; he would learn about the xeno cantinas; he was intelligent enough to fill in the rest.

Thrawn’s lips twitched. His headache grew worse, a sharp pain throbbing in his temple. Dehydration and hunger, he told himself. He felt a cold chill settle over him as he imagined Jarrus — imagined _anyone_ — interrogating the pirates; learning what they’d said to him; learning exactly how they’d held him down, or how they’d spread his legs, or what he’d done and said while feigning fear; learning how they’d—

Carefully, he twisted his wrists inside the stuncuffs until the clasp he’d broken against the bedframe when Kallus shocked him popped loose. With his hands a little more free now, he pinched the bridge of his nose, stopping that train of thought in its tracks. What happened back then was inconsequential. Jarrus was _meant_ to learn what the pirates did and said. It was a minor and _anticipated_ part of the plan.

(Still, the plan could go on without it. There was no harm in hoping no one would ever know.)

(There _was_ harm. Psychological harm. It was what Vanto would call ‘getting his hopes up’ and there was a reason humans advised against it. He needed to stop.)

(There was no point dwelling on it, he told himself.)

Some parts of his strategy with Jarrus had been tweaked and adjusted as the situation evolved — the same was true of any good strategy, of course. A proper tactician does not allow his battle plan to stagnate or freeze; he adapts to the changes at hand whenever possible, and ideally he does so with speed and fluidity. 

When Jarrus first undressed Thrawn and cleaned away the blood and— 

When he cleaned him, there had been signs of sympathy in his face. There had been other signs, too; signs only visible to someone who could see on the infrared spectrum and who was very adept at reading other people’s faces.

Signs of arousal.

A response, Thrawn suspected, triggered by his own perceived humiliation and vulnerability (though of course, he had not _actually_ been humiliated or vulnerable, as he had not actually been raped) — and a response which, he suspected, he could leverage against Jarrus almost immediately. Seeing the arousal on Jarrus’s face (while Thrawn lay undressed and stunned before him; while Jarrus’s hands were tight on his naked thighs; while Jarrus reached between his legs to clean him) had sparked an idea (had sparked a surge of anxiety) that had proved fruitful at least twice since then. 

He’d seen the same subtle arousal a few hours later, when he wet the bed.

(A dull flush colored the tips of Thrawn’s ears. This, he told himself, was an involuntary response, and it meant nothing. It existed only because wetting the bed was accidental. He was not embarrassed by the incidents that followed.)

He tested his theory only a few minutes after that, when Jarrus was bathing him. When he emptied his bladder by choice in the shower, feigning a distress response so that Jarrus would hold him close enough for Thrawn to feel the surges of heat in his body and confirm the hypothesis. It aroused Jarrus when he lost control — perhaps on a level so subtle that Jarrus himself wasn’t aware of it, and perhaps couldn’t explain why he was so drawn to his prisoner. 

This was a fortunate turn of events. It would speed up Thrawn’s overall strategy exponentially.

(The flush in his ears wasn’t going away. Residual embarrassment from the first incident. Nothing else.)

From here, the Rebels would do most of his work for him. Kallus in particular was proving useful; he’d confirmed the Rebel base was on Atollon through the minute flexes of his face and the slight rush of heat which indicated surprise. He was going at Thrawn’s interrogation with the same enthusiasm and intensity which he’d been trained for as an ISB agent, and he’d become so accustomed to being praised for this attitude that he perhaps didn’t notice, or perhaps dismissed, the shocked reaction from Jarrus.

He was lucky Kallus had defected. 

It was fortunate that Kallus was here.

It was good, Thrawn told himself firmly. It was necessary and purposeful. Every second of torture played into his plan perfectly. He lifted his bound hands and rubbed his upper arm as best he could, trying to force the inexplicable trembling there to stop. 

The other Rebels would follow Kallus soon, Thrawn knew. Wren and Bridger were adolescents, and he’d learned at Royal Imperial that adolescent humans were not particularly empathetic, and typically had a cruel streak which they indulged only when society allowed them to. Kallus would provide them an excuse to indulge; Jarrus’s disapproval was not likely to dissuade them right away, though perhaps it would over time.

And in the meantime, Jarrus would see their participation as further confirmation that the Rebellion was not perhaps the shining moral beacon he viewed it as. 

Outside Thrawn’s cell, there was the muted sound of human footsteps on the durasteel floor; the stride and weight of each step corresponded perfectly with Agent Kallus. Quickly, keeping his body relaxed, Thrawn clicked the stuncuffs back into place and let his eyes drift closed, his lips parting slightly as he allowed exhaustion to settle over him again.

Time to start the charade all over again.


End file.
